

















- 


















































LIBRARY NOTES 



A. P. RUSSELL 



NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED 




.'Jo.:-' 

&> 1879 - r - 



BOSTON 

HOUGHTON, OSGOOD AND COMPANY 

C&e Htoeratlie Press, Cambrfofte 

1879 









Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by 

ADDISON P. RUSSELL, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 

All rights reserved. 



RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 



CONTENTS. 



i. 
ii. 

in. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 



Insufficiency 
Extremes . 
Disguises 
Standards . 
Rewards . 
Limits . 
Incongruity . 
Mutations . 
Paradoxes 
Contrasts . 
Types 
Conduct 
Religion 



i 

33 

63 

90 

121 

157 

187 
214 
240 
270 
295 
325 
357 



LIBRARY NOTES. 



i. 

INSUFFICIENCY. 

It was well said by some one that "in every object 
there is an inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it 
what the eye brings means of seeing." " Each one sees 
what he carries in his heart," said Goethe. "You will 
find poetry nowhere," said Joubert, " unless you bring 
some with you." "Those who would see or feel the 
truth of the anatomy in the marble must bring their 
knowledge with them." " Don't you think that statue 
indecent?" said Boswell to Johnson. "No, sir," was 
the reply, " but your remark is." Once, we are told by 
Hazlitt, when a pedantic coxcomb was crying up Raphael 
to the skies, Northcote could not help saying, " If there 
was nothing in Raphael but what you can see in him, we 
should not now have been talking of him." Douglas Jer- 
rold, it is said, disliked the theatre behind the scenes, 
and seldom went there save to witness a rehearsal. He 
would generally attend on the first night of the perform- 
ance of his piece, but he seldom saw the same piece 
twice. His idea, as realized, generally disgusted him. 
He saw it with all the delicate touches rubbed away, — 
a shadow, or a vulgar caricature. His quarrels with act- 
ors were incessant, because they would take their idea 
and not his idea of a part. La Rochefoucauld, in his 
Maxims, gives us a picture, not of human nature, but 



2 LIBRARY NOTES. 

of its selfishness. " He works," said Sterling, " like a 
painter who paints the profile, and chooses the side of the 
face in which the eye is blind and deformed, instead of 
the other, which is unblemished. Yet the picture may 
be a most accurate copy." So do we all. Those of us 
that see at all see but a small part of anything at a time. 
Only a line upon the column is distinctly visible ; all the 
rest is hidden, or obscured in the glaring light or eclips- 
ing shadow. A man, especially, must be looked at all 
around, within, by a fair light, and with a good eye, to be 
seen truly or judged justly. We put a narrow and fine 
sight upon him naturally, and can hardly avoid estimat- 
ing him meanly. We have too much the habit of Fuseli, 
who preferred beginning his sketch of the human figure 
at the lowest point, and working from the foot upward. 
" The wisest amongst us," said the artist and critic, Rich- 
ardson, " is a fool in some things, as the lowest amongst 
men has some just notions, and therein is as wise as Soc- 
rates ; so that every man resembles a statue made to 
stand against a wall or in a niche ; on one side it is a 
Plato, an Apollo, a Demosthenes ; on the other, it is a 
rough, unformed piece of stone." " Both," said Dr. 
Johnson of the remarks of Lord Orrery and Delany on 
Swift, " were right, — only Delany had seen most of the 
good side, Lord Orrery most of the bad." There is a 
curious life of Tiberius, with two title-pages, both taken 
from historical authorities ; two characters — one detest- 
able, the other admirable — of one and the same person ; 
made up, both, of recorded facts. " We ought not," said 
La Bruyere, " to judge of men as of a picture or statue, 
at the first sight ; there is a mind and heart to be searched ; 
the veil of modesty covers merit, and the mask of hy- 
pocrisy disguises malignity. There are but few judges 
that have knowledge to discern aright to pass sentence ; 
'tis but by little and little, and perhaps even by time and 
occasion, that complete virtue or perfect vice come at 



INSUFFICIENCY. 3 

last to show themselves." " A man," said Emerson, " is 
like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no lustre as you 
turn it in your hand, until you come to a particular angle ; 
then it shows deep and beautiful colors." What you 
think of him depends so much on how you look at him. 
As a creature of small ways and little achievements, he 
seems fit only for " stopping a bung-hole ; " as an embod- 
iment of every manly trait and of every Christian virtue, 
he appears indeed " a noble animal, splendid in ashes, 
and pompous in the grave." The petty tyrant of a family, 
he satirizes Caesar ; the canting bigot of the church, he 
brings reproach upon religion. Now a gentleman, he 
makes you think of Sidney ; now a beast, of Swift's revolt- 
ing Yahoo. When truly humble and consciously ignorant, 
he hath the aspect of a child of God ; when conceited, 
dogmatic, aggressive, all the forgotten orthodox teach- 
ings of the fate of the hopeless come back to you with 
the force of apostolic thunder. As the splendid immor- 
tal he is destined to be, you hasten to apotheosize him ; 
as the monster he sometimes appears, you wonder that 
he exists. Burns, who was a master in human nature, 
characterized woman as " great for good, or great for 
evil ; when not an angel, she 's a devil." " There is some- 
thing still more to be dreaded than a Jesuit," said Eugene 
Sue, "and that is a Jesuitess." It seems to be nearly 
impossible to be moderate. If we are calm or deliberate 
enough to be just, we are almost sure to be indifferent. 
Our ignorance, our education, our interests, our prejudices, 
blind our eyes, darken our minds, or drive us to violence. 
There is nothing half and half about us. The little that 
we see, we see so differently and so partially, and igno- 
rance finds its complement in feeling. Dryden said of 
some of the judges of his day, that, right or wrong, they 
always decided for the poor against the rich ; and he 
quoted a saying of Charles II., that the crown was uni- 
formly worsted in every case which was heard before Sir 



4 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Matthew Hale. " The eyes of critics," said Landor, 
" whether in commending or carping, are both on one 
side, like a turbot's." " Truth, as Humanity knows it," 
said Bulwer, " is not what the schoolmen call it, one and 
indivisible ; it is like light, and splits not only into ele- 
mentary colors, but into innumerable tints. Truth with 
Raphael is not the same as truth with Titian ; truth with 
Shakespeare is not the same as truth with Milton ; truth 
with St. Xavier is not the same as truth with Luther ; 
truth with Pitt is not the same as truth with Fox. Each 
man takes from life his favorite truth, as each man takes 
from light his favorite color." 

Perhaps that which astonishes us most, when we fairly 
open our eyes upon the world, is the diversity in every- 
thing. Out in the forest, under the spreading tree, look- 
ing up at the luxuriant foliage, you may not think of the 
difference between the leaves ; but pull down a limb, and 
spend an hour comparing them ; you find, much as they 
resemble, that no two are precisely alike. Examine the 
plumage of the owl that you cruelly brought down with 
your rifle ; every feather of his beautiful dress differs from 
every other ; and, what is more remarkable, every fibre of 
every feather is another feather, still more delicate, differ- 
ing from every other, all of which together yield to the 
pressure of your hand like floss silk. No wonder he fell 
upon the mischievous mole or mouse as noiselessly as the 
shadow of a cloud. Go down to the sea-shore ; the tide 
is out ; there is an apparent waste of white sand, a dull 
extent of uniformity ; but stretch yourself on the beach, 
which the innumerable differing waves have beaten to 
incomparable smoothness, and examine leisurely, with a 
good glass, a few hundred of the infinite grains which you 
thought to be the same, and you discover that they differ, 
that each is differently shaped, each holds the light differ- 
ently, and, what is more wonderful than all, each appears 
to be a shell, or part of a shell, which was once the abode 



INSUFFICIENCY. 5 

of a creature, and a different creature from every other in- 
habiting or that ever inhabited any other shell of the ocean, 
Look into the crowded street ; the men are all men ; they 
all walk upright ; they might wear each other's clothes 
without serious inconvenience ; but could they exchange 
souls ? " Clothe me as you will," said Sancho, " I shall 
still be Sancho Panza." "The soul is not twin-born, but 
the only begotten." " And there never was in the world," 
said Montaigne, "two opinions alike, no more than two 
hairs or two grains. The most universal quality is diver- 
sity." 

" The nerve-tissue," said an acute physiologist, " is 
never precisely the same in two men ; the blood of no two 
men is precisely alike ; the milk of no two women is iden- 
tical in composition — they all vary (within certain limits), 
and sometimes the variation is considerable. It is in this 
that depends what we call the difference of 'tempera- 
ment,' which makes one twin so unlike his brother, and 
makes the great variety of the human race." " Give Pro- 
fessor Owen part of an old bone or a tooth, and he will 
on the instant draw you the whole animal, and tell you 
its habits and propensities. What professor has ever yet 
been able to classify the wondrous variety of human char- 
acter ? How very limited as yet the nomenclature ! We 
know there are in our moral dictionary the religious, the 
irreligious, the virtuous, the vicious, the prudent, the prof- 
ligate, the liberal, the avaricious, and so on to a few 
names, but the comprehended varieties under these terms 
— their mixtures, which, like colors, have no names — 
their strange complexities and intertwining of virtues and 
vices, graces and deformities, diversified and mingled, and 
making individualities — yet of all the myriads of man- 
kind that ever were, not one the same, and scarcely alike ; 
how little way has science gone to their discovery, and 
to mark their delineation ! A few sounds, designated by 
a few letters, speak all thought, all literature, that ever was 



6 LIBRARY NOTES. 

or will be. The variety is infinite, and ever creating a 
new infinite ; and there is some such mystery in the end- 
less variety of human character." 

Cicero gives an account of a man who could distinguish 
marks of difference amongst eggs so well, that he never 
mistook one for another ; and, having many hens, could 
tell which laid a particular egg. 

Socrates asked Menon what virtue was ? " There is," 
said Menon, " the virtue of a man and of a woman, of a 
magistrate and of a private person, of an old man and 
of a child." " Very well," said Socrates, " we were in 
quest of virtue, and thou hast brought us a whole swarm." 

" What," asks the great French essayist, " have our 
legislators got by culling out a hundred thousand particu- 
lar cases, and annexing to these a hundred thousand laws? 
The number holds no manner of proportion with the in- 
finite diversity of human actions ; the multiplication of our 
inventions will never arrive at the variety of examples ; 
add to them a hundred times as many more ; it will not, 
nevertheless, ever happen, that, of events to come, there 
shall any one fall out that, in this great number of thou- 
sands of events so chosen and recorded, shall find any one 
to which it can be so exactly coupled and compared, that 
there will not remain some circumstance and diversity 
which will require a variety of judgment." 

" Some ask," says La Bruyere, " why mankind in gen- 
eral don't compose but one nation, and are not contented 
to speak one language, to live under the same laws, to 
agree amongst themselves in the same customs and wor- 
ship : for my part, seeing the contrariety of their inclina- 
tions, tastes, and sentiments, I wonder to see seven or 
eight persons live under the same roof, within the same 
walls, and make a single family." 

Molecular philosophy shows interspaces betwixt atom 
and atom, differing atoms, which can hardly be said to 
touch ; so bodies are formed, and so society and public 



INSUFFICIENCY. 7 

opinion are compounded. " The single individual is to 
collective humanity," says Alger, " as the little column 
of mercury in the barometer is to the whole atmosphere. 
They balance each other, although infinitely incommen- 
surate. A quicksilver sea, two and a half feet deep, cov- 
ering the globe, would weigh five thousand million tons. 
That is the heft of the air, — that transparent robe of 
blue gauze which outsags the Andes and the Alps. Its 
pressure is unfelt, yet if that pressure were annulled all 
the water on the earth would immediately fly into vapor. 
Public opinion is the atmosphere of society, without 
which the forces of the individual would collapse and 
all the institutions of society fly into atoms." Common 
sense has been defined to be the " average intellect and 
conscience of the civilized world, — that portion of intel- 
ligence, morality, and Christianity, which has been prac- 
tically embodied in life and active power. It destroys 
pretense and quackery, and tests genius and heroism. It 
changes with the progress of society ; persecutes in one 
age what it adopts in the next \ its martyrs of the six- 
teenth century are its precedents and exponents of the 
nineteenth ; and a good part of the common sense of an 
elder day is the common nonsense of our own." 

"The history of human opinions," said Voltaire, "is 
scarcely anything more than the history of human er- 
rors." 

John Foster, in one of his thoughtful essays, has this 
suggestive passage : " If a reflective, aged man were to 
find at the bottom of an old chest — where it had lain 
forgotten fifty years — a record which he had written of 
himself when he was young, simply and vividly describ- 
ing his whole heart and pursuits, and reciting verbatim 
many passages of the language which he sincerely ut- 
tered, would he not read it with more wonder than almost 
every other writing could at his age inspire ? He would 
half lose the assurance of his identity, under the impres- 



8 LIBRARY NOTES. 

sion of this immense dissimilarity. It would seem as if 
it must be the tale of the juvenile days of some ancestor, 
with whom he had no connection but that of name." 
Said Swift, " If a man would register all his opinions 
upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from 
his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of in- 
consistencies and contradictions would appear at last." 
Says Montaigne, " Never did two men make the same 
judgment of the same thing ; and 't is impossible to find 
two opinions .exactly alike, not only in several men, but 
in the same men, at different times." Says Pope, " What 
is every year of a wise man's life but a censure or critique 
on the past ? Those whose date is the shortest live long 
enough to laugh at one half of it ; the boy despises the 
infant; the man, the boy; the philosopher, both; and 
the Christian, all." Diet, health, the weather, affairs, — 
a thousand things, — determine our views. " I knew a 
witty physician," says Emerson, " who found the creed 
in the biliary duct, and used to affirm that if there was 
disease in the liver, the man became a Calvinist, and if 
that organ was sound, he became a Unitarian." Vol- 
taire declared that the fate of a nation had often de- 
pended on the good or bad digestion of a prime minis- 
ter ; and Motley holds that the gout of Charles V. 
changed the destinies of the world. Our views change 
so often that the writer who would be consistent would 
never write at all. The sentence that would express his 
thought at one time would fail at another. Alteration 
would only confuse. An attempt to find words to ex- 
press his thoughts upon any one thing at all times 
would be given up in despair. Voltaire once praised 
another writer very heartily to a third person. " It is very 
strange," was the reply, " that you speak so well of him, 
for he says you are a charlatan." " Oh," replied Voltaire, 
" I think it very likely that both of us are mistaken." 
A day or two after the production of one of Sheridan's 



INSUFFICIENCY. 9 

comedies, a friend met the author, and told him he had 
seen Cumberland at the theatre on its representation. 
"Ah, well," replied Sheridan, "What did he say to 
it ? " " He was n't seen to smile from the beginning to 
the end of the comedy," said the friend. " Come, now, 
that's very ungrateful of him," retorted Sheridan, "for 
I went to see his tragedy the other evening, and laughed 
through the whole of it." Smith gives an account of a 
lady in weeds for her husband who came drooping like a 
willow to Nollekens, the sculptor, desiring a monument, 
and declaring that she did not care what money was ex- 
pended on the memory of one she loved so. " Do what 
you please, but, oh, do it quickly ! " were her parting 
orders. Nollekens went to work, made the design, fin- 
ished the model, and began to look for a block of marble 
to carve it from, when in dropped the lady ; she had been 
absent some three months. " Poor soul," said the sculp- 
tor, when she was announced, " I thought she would 
come soon, but I am ready." The lady came light of 
foot, and lighter of look. " Ah, how do you do, Mr. Nol- 
lekens ? Well, you have not commenced the model ? " 
" Ay, but I have, though," returned the sculptor, " and 
there it stands, finished ! " " There it is, indeed," sighed 
the lady, throwing herself into a chair; they looked at 
each other for a minute's space or so — she spoke first; 
" These, my good friend, are, I know, early days for this 
little change," — she looked at her dress, from which the 
early profusion of crape had disappeared, — " but since 
I saw you, I have met with an old Roman acquaintance 
of yours who has made me an offer, and I don't know 
how he would like to see in our church a monument of 
such expense to my late husband. Indeed, on second 
thought, it would be considered quite enough if I got our 
mason to put up a mural tablet, and that, you know, he 
can cut very prettily." " My charge, madam, for the 
model," said the sculptor, " is one hundred guineas." 



10 LIBRARY NOTES. 

" Enormous ! enormous ! " said the lady, but drew out 
her purse, and paid it. The mutability of human nature ! 
Change, change is the rule. Flaxman, when he was in 
Rome, lived at a sort of chocolate house kept by three 
girls who were so elegant as to be called " the Graces." 
They lived to be so old that they were called " the Fu- 
ries." A distinguished painter has said, that often while 
you are looking at a face, and though you perceive no 
difference in the features, yet you find they have under- 
gone a total alteration of expression. " I have seen sev- 
eral pictures of Garrick," said Macaulay, " none resem- 
bling another, and I have heard Hannah More speak of 
the extraordinary variety of countenance by which he was 
distinguished." " I wish the world, James," said Chris- 
topher North to the Ettrick Shepherd, " would stand still 
for some dozen years — till I am at rest. It seems as 
if the very earth itself were undergoing a vital change. 
Nothing is unalterable, except the heaven above my head, 
and even it, James, is hardly, methinks, at times, the same 
as in former days or nights. There is not much differ- 
ence in the clouds, James, but the blue sky, I must con- 
fess, is not quite so very blue as it was sixty years since ; 
and the sun, although still a glorious luminary, has lost 
a leetle — of his lustre." Gilbert White, in his Natural 
History of Selborne, says he saw a cock-bullfinch in a 
cage, which had been caught in the fields after it was 
come to its full colors. In about a year it began to look 
dingy ; and blackening each succeeding year, it became 
coal-black at the end of four. Its chief food was hemp 
seed. Such influence has food on the color of animals ! 
Darwin, in his Voyage, says that the wild cattle in East 
Falkland Island, originally the same stock, differ much in 
color ; and that in different parts of that one small island, 
different colors predominate. He remarked that the dif- 
ference in the prevailing colors was so obvious, that in 
looking at the herds from a point near Point Pleasant, they 



INSUFFICIENCY. 1 1 

appeared from a long distance like black spots, whilst 
south of Choiseul Sound they appeared like white spots 
on the hill-sides. Round Mount Usborne, at a height of 
one thousand to fifteen hundred feet above the sea, about 
half of some of the herds are mouse or lead colored. 
" From the westward till you get to the river Adur," ob- 
served White, "all the flocks have horns and smooth 
white faces, and white legs, and a hornless sheep is rarely 
to be seen ; but as soon as you pass that river eastward, 
and mount Beeding Hill, all the flocks at once become 
hornless, or, as they call them, poll-sheep ; and have, 
moreover, black faces, with a white tuft of wool on their 
foreheads, and speckled and spotted legs, so that you 
would think that the flocks of Laban were pasturing on 
one side of the stream, and the variegated breed of his 
son-in-law, Jacob, were cantoned along on the other." 
Youatt speaks of two flocks of Leicester sheep which 
have been purely bred from the original stock of Mr. 
Bakewell for more than fifty years. There is not a sus- 
picion existing in the mind of any one at all acquainted 
with the subject, that the owner of either of them has 
deviated in any one instance from the pure blood of 
Mr. BakewelPs flock, and yet the difference between the 
sheep possessed by these two gentlemen is so great that 
they have the appearance of being quite different varie- 
ties. " We may, in truth," said Voltaire, " be naturally 
and aptly resembled to a river, all whose waters pass 
away in perpetual change and flow. It is the same river 
as to its bed, its banks, its source, its mouth, everything, 
in short, that is not itself ; but changing every moment 
its water, which constitutes its very being, it has no iden- 
tity ; there is no sameness belonging to the river." Said 
Sir Kenelm Digby, long before Voltaire, " There is not 
one drop of the same water in the Thames that ran down 
by Whitehall yesternight ; yet no man will deny but that 
it is the same river that was in Queen Elizabeth's time, 



12 LIBRARY NOTES. 

as long as it is supplied from the same common stock, 
the sea." 

Lowell, in one of his critical essays, says that " all 
men are interested in Montaigne in proportion as all 
men find more of themselves in him ; and all men see 
but one image in the glass which the greatest of poets 
holds up to nature, — an image which at once startles 
and charms with its familiarity." Montaigne himself says, 
" Nature, that we may not be dejected with the sight of 
our deformities, has wisely thrust the action of seeing 
outward." " Know thyself," that Apollo caused to be 
written on the front of his temple at Delphi, appeared to 
him contradictory. We are vain of our knowledge, vain 
of our virtue, vain of everything that pertains to us. 
Reading La Rochefoucauld's Maxims at twenty, one is a 
little surprised that the first and longest should be upon 
self-love ; at forty, one is not astonished at the rank and 
importance it has in the philosopher's system. " In 
vain," says Xavier de Maistre, "are looking-glasses mul- 
tiplied around us which reflect light and truth with geo- 
metrical exactness. As soon as the rays reach our vision 
and paint us as we are, self-love slips its deceitful prism 
between us and our image, and presents a divinity to us. 
And of all the prisms that have existed since the first 
that came from the hands of the immortal Newton, none 
has possessed so powerful a refractive force, or produced 
such pleasing and lively colors, as the prism of self-love. 
Now, seeing that ordinary looking-glasses record the truth 
in vain, and that they cannot make men see their own 
imperfections, every one being satisfied with his face, 
what would a moral mirror avail ? Few people would 
look at it, and no one would recognize himself." " Oh, 
the incomparable contrivance of Nature," exclaims Eras- 
mus, " who has ordered all things in so even a method 
that wherever she has been less bountiful in her gifts, 
there she makes it up with a larger dose of self-love, 



INSUFFICIENCY. 1 3 

which supplies the former defects, and makes all even." 
"Could all mankind," says John Norris, "lay claim to 
that estimate which they pass upon themselves, there 
would be little or no difference betwixt laps'd and per- 
fect humanity, and God might again review his image 
with paternal complacency, and still pronounce it good." 
" Blinded as they are as to their true character by self- 
love, every man," says Plutarch, " is his own first and 
chiefest flatterer, prepared therefore to welcome the flat- 
terer from the outside, who only comes confirming the 
verdict of the flatterer within." It was the habit of Sir 
Godfrey Kneller to say to his sitter, " Praise me, sir, 
praise me : how can I throw any animation into your 
face if you don't choose to animate me ? " "I have 
heard," says Bulwer, in one of his essays, "that when the 
late Mr. Kean was performing in some city of the United 
States, he came to the manager at the end of the third 
act and said, ' I can't go on the stage again, sir, if the 
pit keeps its hands in its pockets. Such an audience 
would extinguish ./Etna.' The audience being notified 
by the manager of the determination of the actor, proved 
hearty enough in its applause. As the favor of the au- 
dience rose, so rose the genius of the actor, and the con- 
tagion of their own applause redoubled their enjoyment 
of the excellence it contributed to create." " Vanity," 
says Pascal, " has taken so firm a hold on the heart of 
man, that a porter, a hodman, a turnspit, can talk greatly 
of himself, and is for having his admirers. Philosophers 
who write of the contempt of glory do yet desire the 
glory of writing well ; and those who read their compo- 
sitions would not lose the glory of having read them. 
We are so presumptuous as that we desire to be known 
to all the world ; and even to those who are not to come 
into the world till we have left it. And, at the same 
time, we are so little and vain as that the esteem of five 
or six persons about us is enough to content and amuse 



14 LIBRARY NOTES. 

us." " We censure others," says Sir Thomas Browne, 
" but as they disagree from that humor which we fancy 
laudable in ourselves, and commend others but for that 
wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us. So 
that in conclusion, all is but that we all condemn, self- 
love." We think ourselves of great importance in the 
eyes of others, when we are only so in our own. Calmly 
considering it, what can be more astonishing than vanity 
in a middle-aged person ? Know as much as it is possi- 
ble for a human being to know in this world, he cannot 
know enough to justify him in being vain of his knowl- 
edge. Good as it is possible for a human being to be, 
he cannot be good enough to excuse a conceit of his 
goodness. Yet how common it is for full-grown igno- 
rance to have conceit of wisdom, and for ordinary virtue 
to assume the airs of saintship. How we shall one day 
wonder, looking back at the world we have left, at the 
nearly invisible mites, like ourselves; tossing their heads 
in pride, and gathering their skirts in self-righteousness, 
that we were ever as vain and shameless as they, and 
that the little things of life ever so engrossed us. Alas, 
to learn and unlearn is our fate ; to gather as we climb 
the hill of life, to scatter as we descend it : empty-handed 
alike at the end and at the beginning. 

" Youth's heritage is hope, but man's 
Is retrospect of shattered plans, 
And doubtful glances cast before." 

" All the world, all that we are, and all that we have, 
our bodies and our souls, our actions and our sufferings, 
our conditions at home, our accidents abroad, our many 
sins, and our seldom virtues," says Jeremy Taylor, " are 
as so many arguments to make our souls dwell low in the 
valleys of humility." We are not what we think our- 
selves, nor are other people what we think them, else 
this were a different world. We know not ourselves, nor 
others, nor anything, so well as to avoid misapprehend- 



INSUFFICIENCY. 1 5 

ing everything. Our condition is ignorance and humility, 
and better it were if we kept modestly in our paths. 
Whatever we do or are, we are of chief importance to our- 
selves. Northcote said that he often blamed himself for 
uttering what might be thought harsh things ; and that on 
mentioning this once to Kemble, and saying it sometimes 
kept him from sleep, after he had been out in company, 
Kemble replied, " Oh, you need not trouble yourself so 
much about them ; others never think of them after- 
ward." " I see you will not believe it," said Sydney 
Smith, "but I was once very shy." "Were you, indeed, 
Mr. Smith ? how did you cure yourself ? " " Why, it was 
not very long before I made two very useful discoveries : 
First, that all mankind were not solely employed in ob- 
serving me (a belief that all young people have) ; and 
next, that shamming was of no use ; that the world was 
very clear-sighted, and soon estimated a man at his just 
value. This cured me, and I determined to be natural, 
and let the world find me out." " The world," says 
Thackeray, " can pry out everything about us which it 
has a mind to know. But there is this consolation, which 
men will never accept in their own cases, that the world 
does n't care. Consider the amount of scandal it has 
been forced to hear in its time, and how weary it must be 
of that kind of intelligence. You are taken to prison 
and fancy yourself indelibly disgraced ? You are bank- 
rupt under odd circumstances ? You drive a queer bar- 
gain with your friend and are found out, and imagine the 
world will punish you ? Pshaw ! Your shame is only van- 
ity. Go and talk to the world as if nothing had hap- 
pened, and nothing has happened. Tumble down ; brush 
the mud off your clothes; appear with a smiling counte- 
nance, and nobody cares. Do you suppose society is go- 
ing to take out its pocket-handkerchief and be inconsol- 
able when you die ? Why should it care, very much, then, 
whether your worship graces yourself or disgraces your- 



l6 LIBRARY NOTES. 

self? Whatever happens, it talks, meets, jokes, yawns, 
has its dinner, pretty much as before." Depend upon it, 
the world will not hunt you, nor concern itself much 
about you. If you want its favors you must keep yourself 
in its eye. Cicero left Sicily extremely pleased with the 
success of his administration, and flattered himself that 
all Rome was celebrating his praises, and that the people 
would readily grant him everything that he desired ; in 
which imagination he landed at Puteoli, a considerable 
port adjoining to Baiae, the chief seat of pleasure in Italy, 
where there was a perpetual resort of all the rich and the 
great, as well for the delights of its situation as for the 
use of its baths and hot waters. But here, as he himself 
pleasantly tells the story, he was not a little mortified by 
the first friend whom he met, who asked him how long he 
had left Rome, and what news there, when he answered 
that he came from the provinces. " From Africk, I sup- 
pose," says another; and upon his replying, with some 
indignation, " No ; I come from Sicily," a third, who 
stood by, and had a mind to be thought wiser, said pres- 
ently, " How ? did you not know that Cicero was quaestor 
of Syracuse ? " Upon which, perceiving it in vain to be 
angry, he fell into the humor of the place, and made him- 
self one of the company who came to the waters. This 
mortification gave some little check to his ambition, or 
taught him rather how to apply it more successfully ; and 
did him more good, he says, than if he had received all 
the compliments that he expected ; for it made him re- 
flect that the people of Rome had dull ears, but quick 
eyes ; and that it was his business to keep himself always 
in their sight ; nor to be so solicitous how to make them 
hear of him, as to make them see him : so that, from this 
moment, he resolved to stick close to the forum, and to 
live perpetually in the view of the city ; nor to suffer 
either his porter or his sleep to hinder any man's access 
to him. 



INSUFFICIENCY. 1 7 

As capital in trade must be constantly turning to ac- 
cumulate, so intelligence must be constantly in use to 
be useful. Its value and utility and accuracy can only 
be known by constantly testing it. A false light leads 
straight into the bog, and misinformation is worse than 
no information at all. Curiosity has need to be on tip- 
toe, — but cautious, nevertheless. Southey tells a story 
in his Doctor which the Jesuit Manuel de Vergara used 
to tell of himself. When he was a little boy he asked a 
Dominican friar what was the meaning of the seventh 
commandment, for he said he could not tell what com- 
mitting adultery was. The friar, not knowing how to an- 
swer, cast a perplexed look around the room, and think- 
ing he had found a safe reply, pointed to a kettle on the 
fire, and said the commandment meant that he must never 
put his hand in the pot while it was boiling. The very 
next day, a loud scream alarmed the family, and behold 
there was little Manuel running about the room, holding 
up his scalded finger, and exclaiming, " Oh dear ! oh 
dear ! I 've committed adultery ! I Ve committed adul- 
tery ! I Ve committed adultery ! " 

Men are most apt to believe what they least under- 
stand. What they are most ready to talk upon, if they 
knew just a little more about, they would be dumb ; or 
would at least betray in some degree what John Buncle 
calls "the decencies of ignorance." We are told that 
shortly after the shock of the famous earthquake at Tal- 
cahuano, a great wave was seen from the distance of 
three or four miles, approaching in the middle of the bay 
with a smooth outline ; but along the shore it tore up 
cottages and trees, as it swept onward with irresistible 
force. At the head of the bay it broke in a fearful line 
of white breakers, which rushed up to a height of twenty- 
three vertical feet above the highest spring-tides. The 
lower orders in Talcahuano thought that the earthquake 
was caused by some old Indian women, witches, who, two 



1 8 LIBRARY NOTES. 

years before, being offended, stopped the volcano of An- 
tuco ! 

Bishop Latimer says that "Master More was once 
sent in commission into Kent, to help to try out, if it 
might be, what was the cause of Goodwin Sands, and the 
shelf that stopped up Sandwich Haven. Among others, 
came in before him an old man with a white head, and 
one that was thought to be little less than one hundred 
years old. Quoth Master More, How say you in this 
matter ? What think you to be the cause of these shelves 
and flats that stop up Sandwich Haven ? Forsooth, quoth 
he, I am an old man. I think that Tenterden-steeple is 
the cause of Goodwin Sands ; for I am an old man, sir, 
quoth he, and I may remember the building of Tenterden- 
steeple, and I may remember when there was no steeple 
at all there. And before that Tenterden-steeple was in 
building, there was no manner of speaking of any flats 
or sands that stopped the haven, and therefore I think 
that Tenterden-steeple is the cause of the destroying and 
decay of Sandwich Haven ! " (The centenarian's reply 
crystallized at once into a proverb and synonym for pop- 
ular ignorance ; but what if the old man had in his mind 
the half of the story omitted by Latimer — that the ob- 
noxious steeple had been built by a bishop with fifty 
thousand pounds appropriated to build a breakwater ! ) 

The fox that Darwin tells us about in his Voyage was 
literally lost in the presence of wonders. " In the even- 
ing," says the naturalist, " we reached the island of San 
Pedro. In doubling the point, two of the officers landed, 
to take a round of angles with the theodolite. A fox of 
a kind said to be peculiar on the island, and very rare in 
it, was sitting on the rocks. He was so intently absorbed 
in watching the work of the officers, that I was able, by 
quietly walking up behind, to knock him on the head 
with my geological hammer ! " 

"We on this globe," said Voltaire, speaking of the 



INSUFFICIENCY. 19 

slender acquaintance of Europe with the Chinese Empire, 
" we on this globe are like insects in a garden — those 
who live on an oak seldom meet those who pass their 
short lives on an ash." " We are poor, silly animals," 
says Horace Walpole; "we live for an instant upon a 
particle of a boundless universe, and are much like a but- 
terfly that should argue about the nature of the seasons, 
and what creates their vicissitudes, and does not exist it- 
self to see an annual revolution of them." When Dr. 
Livingstone returned from Africa, after a stay of sixteen 
years as a missionary, he was induced to bring with him 
an intelligent and affectionate native, Sekwebu, who had 
been of great service to him. When they parted from 
their friends at Kilemane, the sea on the bar was fright- 
ful, even to the seamen. This was the first time Sekwebu 
had seen the sea. As the terrible breakers broke over 
them, he asked, wonderingly, " Is this the way you go ? 
Is this the way you go ? " exclaiming, " What a strange 
country is this — all water together ! " 

At sea, a person's eye being six feet above the sur- 
face of the water, his horizon is only two miles and four 
fifths distant ; yet his tongue will as freely wag of the 
world as if it were all spinning under his eye. We freely 
discuss the ignorance of those we believe to be less in- 
telligent than ourselves, never thinking that we are the 
cause of like amusement to those who are more intelli- 
gent that we are. Fewer laugh with us than at us. The 
grades are so many that contrast is more natural than 
comparison. Unfortunately, too, it is only in the descent 
that we can see, and that but a little way. We know it 
is up, up, that we would go, but the rounds of the ladder 
are but vaguely visible. But a small part, indeed, we 
perceive of the prodigious sweep from the lowest igno- 
rance to possible intelligence. Happily, credulity fills the 
empty spaces, and, setting itself up for original wisdom, 
satisfies us with ourselves and ours. Thackeray, in one 



20 LIBRARY NOTES. 

of his best novels, thus satirically screams out one of its 
uses : " Oh, Mr. Pendennis ! if Nature had not made 
that provision for each sex in the credulity of the other, 
which sees good qualities where none exist, good looks 
in donkeys' ears, wit in their numskulls, and music in 
their bray, there would not have been near so much mar- 
rying and giving in marriage as now obtains, and as is 
necessary for the due propagation and continuance of the 
noble race to which we belong ! " "I desire to die," 
said Horace Walpole, "when I have nobody left to laugh 
with me. I have never yet seen, or heard, anything seri- 
ous that was not ridiculous Oh ! we are ridiculous 

animals ; and if angels have any fun in them, how we 
must divert them." 

" I had taken, when a child," says Crabb Robinson, 
" a great fancy to the Book of Revelation ; and I have 
heard that I asked our minister to preach from that book, 
because it was my favorite. ' And why is it your favorite, 
Henry ? ' ' Because it is so pretty and easy to under- 
stand ! ' " 

Robert Robinson, a witty and distinguished clergyman 
in the last century, was addressed by a grave brother, 
" Friend, I never heard you preach on the Trinity." "Oh, 
I intend to do so," was the reply, " as soon as ever I un- 
derstand it ! " 

This recalls the rebuke of a clergyman to a young man, 
who said he would believe nothing which he could not 
understand. " Then, young man, your creed will be the 
shortest of any man's I know." 

John Foster's observations upon an atheist you remem- 
ber, — " one of the most daring beings in the creation, a 
contemner of God, who explodes his laws by denying his 
existence. If you were so unacquainted with mankind 
that this character might be announced to you as a rare or 
singular phenomenon, your conjectures, till you saw and 
heard the man, at the nature and the extent of the dis- 



INSUFFICIENCY. 21 

cipline through which he must have advanced, would be 
led toward something extraordinary. And you might 
think that the term of that discipline must have been 
very long; since a quick train of impressions, a short 
series of mental gradations, within the little space of a 
few months and years, would not seem enough to have 
matured such an awful heroism. Surely the creature that 
thus lifts his voice, and defies all invisible power within 
the possibilities of infinity, challenging whatever unknown 
being may hear him, was not as yesterday a little child, 
that would tremble and cry at the approach of a diminu- 
tive reptile. But indeed it is heroism no longer, if he 
knows there is no God. The wonder then turns on the 
great process by which a man could grow to the immense 
intelligence that can know that there is no God. What 
ages and what lights are requisite for this attainment ! 
This intelligence involves the very attributes of the Di- 
vinity, while a God is denied. For unless this man is 
omnipresent, unless he is at this moment in every place 
in the universe, he cannot know but there may be in 
some place manifestations of a Deity by which even he 
would be overpowered. If he does not know absolutely 
every agent in the universe, the one that he does not 
know may be God. If he is not in absolute possession 
of all the propositions that constitute universal truth, the 
one which he wants may be, that there is a God. If he 
does not know everything that has been done in the im- 
measurable ages that are past, some things may have 
been done by a God. Thus, unless he knows all things, 
that is, precludes another Deity by being one himself, he 
cannot know that the Being whose existence he rejects 
does not exist. And yet a man of ordinary age and in- 
telligence may present himself to you with the avowal of 
being thus distinguished from the crowd ! " 

" I had one just flogging," says Coleridge. " When I 
was about thirteen I went to a shoemaker and begged 



22 LIBRARY NOTES. 

him to take me as his apprentice. He, being an honest 
man, immediately brought me to Boyer, [the head-master 
at the charity-school] who got into a great rage, knocked 
me down, and even pushed Crispin rudely out of the 
room. Boyer asked me why I had made myself such a 
fool ? to which I answered that I had a great desire to 
be a shoemaker, and that I hated the thought of being 
a clergyman. ' Why so ? ' said he. ' Because, to tell you 
the truth, sir,' said I, ' I am an infidel ! ' For this, with- 
out more ado, Boyer flogged me, — wisely, as I think, — 
soundly, as I know. Any whining or sermonizing would 
have gratified my vanity, and confirmed me in my ab- 
surdity; as it was, I was laughed at and got heartily 
ashamed of my folly." At a supper-table, when Cottle 
was present, Coleridge spoke of the unutterable horror 
he felt, when a son of Holcroft, (the atheist,) a boy eight 
years of age, came up to him and said, " There is no 
God." 

" It is one thing to see that a line is crooked, and an- 
other thing to be able to draw a straight one," said Con- 
versation Sharpe. " It is not quite so easy to do good as 
those may imagine who never try." Says Montaigne, 
" Could my soul once take footing, I would not essay, 
but resolve ; but it is always leaving and making trial." 
" 'T is an exact and exquisite life that contains itself in 
due order in private. Every one may take a part in the 
farce, and assume the part of an honest man upon the 
stage \ but within, and in his own bosom, where all 
things are lawful to us, all things concealed, — to be reg- 
ular, that is the point. The next degree is to be so in 
one's house, in one's ordinary actions, for which one is 
accountable to none, and where there is no study or ar- 
tifice." " We chiefly, who live private lives, not exposed 
to any other view than our own, ought to have settled a 
pattern within ourselves, by which to try our actions." 
" Conscience," cries Sterne, " is not a law ; no, God and 



INSUFFICIENCY. 23 

reason made the law, and have placed conscience within 
you to determine." 

How often our virtues and benefactions are but the 
effects of our vices and our crimes \ and as often do our 
vices disguise themselves under the name of virtues. 
" We ought not," says Montaigne, " to honor with the 
name of duty that peevishness and inward discontent 
which spring from private interest and passion ; nor call 
treacherous and malicious conduct courage. People give 
the name of zeal to their propensity to mischief and vio- 
lence, though it is not the cause, but their interest, that 
inflames them. Miserable kind of remedy, to owe a 
man's health to his disease. The virtue of the soul does 
not consist in flying high, but walking orderly • its grand- 
eur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in medioc- 
rity." The greatest man is great in matters of self-con- 
duct ; the wisest is wise in little matters of life \ the one 
is never little, the other never foolish. 

" The superior man," says Confucius, " does not wait 
till he sees things, to be cautious, nor till he hears things, 
to be apprehensive. There is nothing more visible than 
what is secret, and nothing more manifest than what is 
minute. Therefore, the superior man will watch over 
himself when he is alone. He examines his heart that 
there may be nothing wrong there, and that he may have 
no cause for dissatisfaction with himself. That wherein 
he excels is simply his work which other men cannot see. 
Are you free from shame in your apartment, when you 
are exposed only to the light of heaven ? " 

" Most men," says Alger, " live blindly to repeat a 
routine of drudgery and indulgence, without any deliber- 
ately chosen and maintained aims. Many live to outstrip 
their rivals, pursue their enemies, gratify their lusts, and 
make a display. Few live distinctly to develop the value 
of their being, know the truth, love their fellows, enjoy 
the beauty of the world, and aspire to God." 



24 LIBRARY NOTES. 

" Life is a series of surprises," says Emerson, " and 
would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not. 
God delights to isolate us every day, and hide from us 
the past and the future. We would look about us, but 
with grand politeness He draws down before us an im- 
penetrable screen of purest sky. ' You will not remem- 
ber,' He seems to say, ' and you will not expect.' " 

Goldsmith, in one of his delightful Chinese Letters, 
gives this illustration of the vanity and uncertainty of 
human judgment : " A painter of eminence was once re- 
solved to finish a piece which should please the whole 
world. When, therefore, he had drawn a picture, in 
which his utmost skill was exhausted, it was exposed in 
the public market-place, with directions at the bottom for 
every spectator to mark with a brush, which lay by, every 
limb and feature which seemed erroneous. The spec- 
tators came, and in general applauded ; but each, will- 
ing to show his talent at criticism, marked whatever he 
thought proper. At evening, when the painter came, he 
was mortified to find the whole picture one universal blot ; 
not a single stroke that was not stigmatized with marks 
of disapprobation. Not satisfied with this trial, the next 
day he was resolved to try them in a different manner, 
and, exposing his picture as before, desired that every 
spectator would mark those beauties he approved or ad- 
mired. The people complied ; and the artist, returning, 
found his picture replete with the marks of beauty ; every 
stroke that had been yesterday condemned now received 
the character of approbation." 

" Experience tells us," says La Bruyere, " if there are 
ten persons who would blot a thought or an expression out 
of a book, there are a like number who would oppose it." 
"The most accomplished piece," he thought, "which the 
age has produced would fail under the hands of the crit- 
ics and censurers, if the author would hearken to all their 
objections, and allow every one to throw out the passage 



INSUFFICIENCY. 25 

that pleased him the least." " To hear praise and dis- 
praise on a sermon, a piece of music, or a picture, and 
upon the very same subject to be entertained with quite 
opposite sentiments, is what makes one freely conclude 
we may safely publish anything, good or bad ; for the 
good pleases some, the bad others, and the worst has its 
admirers." 

At a club meeting in London, a nephew of Macau- 
lay refused to rise when the national anthem was sung ; 
but when he said that he did so from principle, he was 
respected in it. Others when questioned as to why they 
rose said, one because it was a hymn ; another because 
of loyalty to England ; another because he loved the 
queen ; another because it was the custom ; and they 
finally justified the refusal to rise because no two of them 
could agree as to why they rose. 

Irving, in his Knickerbocker's New York, thus refers 
to the habit of criticising and complaining in the time of 
William the Testy : " Cobblers abandoned their stalls to 
give lessons on political economy ; blacksmiths suffered 
their fires to go out while they stirred up the fires of fac- 
tion ; and even tailors, though said to be the ninth parts 
of humanity, neglected their own measures to criticise 
the measures of government. Strange ! that the science 
of government, which seems to be so generally under- 
stood, should invariably be denied to the only ones called 
upon to exercise it. Not one of the politicians in ques- 
tion but, take his word for it, could have administered 
affairs ten times better than William the Testy." 

Socrates used to say that although no man undertakes 
a trade he has not learned, even the meanest, yet every 
one thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of 
all trades, that of government. 

" Whoever would aim directly at a cure of a public 
evil," says Montaigne, " and would consider of it before 
he began, would be very willing to withdraw his hands 



26 LIBRARY NOTES. 

from meddling in it. Pacuvius Calavius, according to 
Livy, corrected the vice of this proceeding by a notable 
example. His fellow-citizens were in mutiny against their 
magistrates ; he, being a man of great authority in the 
city of Capua, found means one day to shut up the sena- 
tors in the palace, and calling the people together in the 
market-place, he told them that the day was now come 
wherein, at full liberty, they might revenge themselves 
on the tyrants by whom they had been so long oppressed, 
and whom he had now, all alone and unarmed, at his 
mercy ; and advised that they should call them out one 
by one by lot, and should particularly determine of every 
one, causing whatever should be decreed to be immedi- 
ately executed ; with this caution, that they should at the 
same time depute some honest man in the place of him 
that was condemned, to the end that there might be no 
vacancy in the senate. They had no sooner heard the 
name of one senator, but a great cry of universal dislike 
was raised up against him. ' I see,' said Pacuvius, 'we 
must get rid of him ; he is a wicked fellow ; let us look 
out a good one in his room.' Immediately there was 
a profound silence, every one being at a stand who to 
choose. But one, more impudent than the rest, having 
named his man, there arose yet a greater consent of 
voices against him, a hundred imperfections being laid to 
his charge, and as many just reasons being presently 
given why he should not stand. These contradictory 
humors growing hot, it fared worse with the second sena- 
tor and the third, there being as much disagreement in 
the election of the new, as consent in the putting out of 
the old. In the end, growing weary of this bustle to no 
purpose, they began, some one way and some another, to 
steal out of the assembly ; every one carrying back this 
resolution in his mind, that the oldest and best known 
evil was ever more supportable than one that was new 
and untried." 



INSUFFICIENCY. 27 

" Among all animals man is the only one who tries to 
pass for more than he is, and so involves himself in the 
condemnation of seeming less." " The negro king de- 
sired to be portrayed as white. But do not laugh at the 
poor African," pleads Heine, " for every man is but an- 
other negro king, and would like to appear in a color dif- 
ferent from that with which Fate has bedaubed him." 

It is even harder, when he is most barbarous and be- 
sotted in his ignorance, to disturb his complacency and 
self-conceit. "It was most ludicrous," says Darwin, "to 
watch through a glass the Indians, as often as the shot 
struck the water, take up stones, and, as a bold defiance, 
throw them toward the ship, though about a mile and a 
half distant ! A boat was then sent with orders to fire a 
few musket-shots wide of them. The Fuegians hid them- 
selves behind the trees, and for every discharge of the 
muskets they fired their arrows ; all, however, fell short 
of the boat, and the officer as he pointed at them laughed. 
This made the Fuegians frantic with passion, and they 
shook their mantles in vain rage. At last, seeing the balls 
cut and strike the trees, they ran away, and we were left 
in peace and quietness." 

Mungo Park, while traveling in Africa, once entered a 
region until that time unexplored by civilized man. His 
escort of Guinea negroes carried him to witness a gala-day 
jollification. The sable chief was sitting on a stump in 
the centre of a cleared half-acre, his face tattooed, trink- 
ets dangling from his nose, ears, chin, etc., and his sub- 
jects were dancing around him. Having sold negroes, 
captured in war, to the slave-traders on the coast, the 
chief had learned to speak a little outlandish English. 
When the visitor approached His Majesty, — the dance 
suspended, — he exclaimed : " English ? " " Yes," said 
Park, " I am an Englishman." " Way over yonder ? " said 
the chief, pointing westward. " Yes," answered Park ; 
" three thousand miles off." " What folks say 'bout me 
dar ? " was the eager inquiry of his African Majesty. 



28 LIBRARY NOTES. 

The half-naked barbarians of Abyssinia claim descent 
from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and boast 
that all other kings are but upstarts and pretenders com- 
pared to theirs. Reminding the reader of the " most 
mighty emperor of Lilliput " (six inches in height), de- 
scribed in the famous state paper as the " delight and 
terror of the universe, whose dominions extend (about 
twelve miles in circumference) to the extremities of the 
globe ; monarch of all monarchs, taller than the sons of 
men ; whose feet press down to the centre, and whose head 
strikes against the sun ; at whose nod the princes of the 
earth shake their knees ; pleasant as the spring, comfort- 
able as the summer, fruitful as autumn, dreadful as winter." 

You remember the famous contest of an eminent wit, 
in Billingsgate. He was passing through the market, as 
the story goes, when he was rudely jostled and profanely 
addressed by a monstrous fish-woman. " See how I will 
bring her down without degrading myself," whispered he 
to his companion. Looking straight at the creature, he 
said to her, deliberately and emphatically, " You are a 
triangle ! " which made her swear louder than ever. He 
then called her " a rectangle ! a parallelogram ! " That 
made her eloquent ; but the great man with a big voice 
again broke through her volubility, screaming fiercely, 
1 You are a miserable, wicked hypothenuse ! " That dum- 
founded the brute. She had never heard swearing like 
that. 

Curran used to tell of a like ludicrous encounter be- 
tween himself and a fish-woman on the quay at Cork. 
This lady, whose tongue w r ould have put Billingsgate to 
the blush, was urged one day to assail him, which she 
did with very little reluctance. "I thought myself a 
match for her," said he, " and valorously took up the 
gauntlet. But such a virago never skinned an eel. My 
whole vocabulary made not the least impression. On 
the contrary, she was manifestly becoming more vigorous 



INSUFFICIENCY. 



2 9 



every moment, and I had nothing for it but to beat a re- 
treat. This, however, was to be done with dignity ; so, 
drawing myself up disdainfully, I said, ' Madam, I scorn 
all further discourse with such an individual ! ' She did 
not understand the word, and thought it, no doubt, the 
very hyperbole of opprobrium. ' Individual, you waga- 
bone ! ' she screamed, ' what do you mean by that ? I 'm 
no more an individual than your mother was ? ' Never 
was victory more complete. The whole sisterhood did 
homage to me, and I left the quay of Cork covered with 
glory." 

The discomfiture of Miss Pinkerton, who attempted 
once to scold Becky Sharp in public, is familiar to every 
reader of Thackeray. Rebecca hit upon the plan of an- 
swering her in French, which quite routed the old woman. 

A wise man, who lived a long life of virtue, study, 
travel, society, and reflection ; who read the best books 
and conversed with the greatest and best men ; the com- 
panion of philosophers and scientists ; familiar with all 
important discoveries and experiments ; after he was 
three-score and ten, wrote, " It is remarkable that the 
more there is known, the more it is perceived there is to 
be known. And the infinity of knowledge to be acquired 
runs parallel with the infinite faculty of knowing, and its 
development. Sometimes I feel reconciled to my extreme 
ignorance, by thinking, If I know nothing, the most 
learned know next to nothing." " Had I earlier known," 
said Goethe, " how many excellent things have been in 
existence, for hundreds and thousands of years, I should 
have written no line ; I should have had enough else to 
do." Cardinal Farnese one day found Michel Angelo, 
when an old man, walking alone in the Coliseum, and 
expressed his surprise at finding him solitary amidst the 
ruins ; to which he replied, " I go yet to school, that I 
may continue to learn." In his last days, he made a de- 
sign of himself as a child in a go-cart, with this motto 



30 LIBRARY NOTES. 

under it, " I am yet learning." Rubens complained, that 
just as he was beginning to understand his profession he 
was forced to quit it. Mozart declared on his death-bed, 
that he began to see what may be done in music. Buf- 
fon told a friend that, after passing fifty years at his 
desk, he was every day learning to write. Macaulay, the 
year before his death, after spending some hours over his 
own writings, wrote in his diary : " Alas ! how short life 
and how long art ! I feel as if I had just begun to un- 
derstand how to write ; and the probability is that I have 
very nearly done writing." Theophrastus, one hundred 
and seven years old, St. Jerome assures us, lamented 
that he was obliged to quit life at a time when he just 
began to be wise. Mrs. Jameson once asked Mrs. Sid- 
dons which of her great characters she preferred to play ? 
She replied, after a moment's consideration, " Lady Mac- 
beth is the character I have most studied." She after- 
ward said that she had played the character during thirty 
years, and scarcely acted it once without carefully read- 
ing over the part, and generally the whole play, in the 
morning ; and that she never read over the play without 
finding something new in it ; " something," she said, 
" which had not struck me so much as it ought to have 
struck me." Dugald Stewart said of Bacon's Essays that 
in reading them for the twentieth time he observed some- 
thing which had escaped his attention in the nineteenth. 
" I do not know," said Newton, " what I may appear to 
the world ; but to myself I seem to have been only like a 
boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now 
and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell 
than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all un- 
discovered before me." Said Bossuet, " The term of my 
existence will be eighty years at most, but let us allow it 
an hundred. What ages have rolled before I had my 
being ! How many will flow after I am gone ! And what 
a small space do I occupy in this grand succession of 



INSUFFICIENCY. 3 1 

years ! I am as a blank ; this diminutive interval is not 
sufficient to distinguish me from that nothing to which I 
must inevitably return. I seem only to have made my 
appearance for the purpose of increasing the number ; 
and I am even useless — for the play would have been 
just as well performed, had I remained behind the 
scenes." Wrote Voltaire, " I am ignorant how I was 
formed, and how I was born. I was perfectly ignorant, 
for a quarter of my life, of the reasons of all that I saw, 
heard, and felt, and was a mere parrot, talking by rote 
in imitation of other parrots. When I looked about me 
and within me, I conceived that something existed from 
all eternity. Since there are beings actually existing, I 
concluded that there is some being necessary and neces- 
sarily eternal. Thus the first step which I took to extri- 
cate myself from my ignorance overpassed the limits of 
all ages — the boundaries of time. But when I was de- 
sirous of proceeding in this infinite career, I could neither 
perceive a single path, nor clearly distinguish a single 
object; and from the flight which I took to contemplate 
eternity, I have fallen back into the abyss of my original 
ignorance." "Heads of capacity, and such as are not 
full with a handful, or easy measure of knowledge, think 
they know nothing till they know all ; which being im- 
possible, they fall," said Sir Thomas Browne, " upon the 
opinion of Socrates, and only know they know not any- 
thing." Hiero, tyrant of Sicily, asked old Simonides to 
tell him what God is. The poet answered him that it 
was not a question that could be immediately answered, 
and that he wanted a whole day to think upon it. When 
that term was over, Hiero asked the answer ; but Simon- 
ides desired two days more to consider of it. This was 
not the last delay he asked ; he was often called on to 
give an answer, and every time he desired double the 
time he had last demanded. The tyrant, wondering at it, 
desired to know the reason of it. I do so, answered Si- 



32 LIBRARY NOTES. 

monides, because the more I examine the matter, the 
more obscure it appears to me. " After reading all that 
has been written," says the poet Poe, " and all that can 
be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, the man 
who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find him- 
self face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, 
the most profound thought is that which can be the least 
easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment." 
"I am a fragment, and this is a fragment of me," says 

Emerson "I am very content with knowing, if 

only I could know To know a little, would be 

worth the expense of this world." " You read of but one 
wise man," says Congreve, " and all that he knew was — 
that he knew nothing." " The curiosity of knowing 
things has been given to man for a scourge." "If God," 
said Lessing, " held all truth shut in his right hand, and 
in his left nothing but the restless instinct for truth, 
though with the condition of forever and ever erring, and 
should say to me, Choose ! I would bow reverently to 
his left hand, and say, Father, give ! Pure truth is for 
Thee alone ! " 



II. 

EXTREMES. 

In man, it has been said, there will be a layer of fierce 
hyena, or of timid deer, running through the nature in the 
most uncertain and tortuous manner. Nero is sensitive to 
poetry and music, but not to human suffering : Marcus 
Aurelius is tolerant and good to all men but Christians. 
The Tlascalans of Mexico loved, and even worshiped, 
flowers ; but they were cruel to excess, and sacrificed hu- 
man victims with savage delight. The body of the sacri- 
ficed captive, we are told by Prescott, was delivered to 
the warrior who had taken him in battle, and by him, 
after being dressed, was served up in an entertainment to 
his friends. This was not the coarse repast of famished 
cannibals, but a banquet teeming with delicious beverages 
and delicate viands, prepared with art, and attended by 
both sexes, who conducted themselves with all the decorum 
of civilized life. The Aztec priests were more wild and 
ferocious than the soldiery, their hair was long and mat- 
ted, and their garments were stained with human blood. 
The good and the evil lie close together ; the virtues and 
the vices alternate ; so is human power accumulated • al- 
ternately the metals and the rags ; a terrible Voltaic pile. 
In the well-bred animal the claw is nicely cushioned ; the 
old Adam is presentable. Overhear a beautiful young 
woman swear, and meet her an hour afterward, all smiles 
and loveliness, in the drawing-room. Speak with unre- 
served kindness of one lady to another, — both of them 
very lovely creatures, so far as you know, — and receive 
in reply, " Don't ! She, of all persons I know, is the only 
3 



34 LIBRARY NOTES. 

one I hate to hear praised." Lady Mary Wortley Mon- 
tagu said of the Duchess of Marlborough, " We continue 
to see one another like two persons who are resolved to 
hate with civility." " It goes far to reconcile me to be- 
ing a woman," she said on another occasion, "when I re- 
flect that I am thus in no danger of ever marrying one." 
Madame de Maintenon and Madame de Montespan met 
in public, talked with vivacity, and, to those who judged 
only by appearances, seemed excellent friends. Once 
when they had to make a journey in the same carriage, 
Madame de Montespan said, "Let us talk as if there 
were no difference between us, but on condition that we 
resume our disputes when we return." Pietro Delia Valle 
says that when the Ecce Homo was exposed during the 
sermon in the Jesuit church at Goa, the women used to 
beat their servants, if they did not cry enough to please 
them. Saint-Simon relates of the Marechale de la Ferte 
and her sister, both beautiful women, but very dissolute, 
that upon one occasion they heard a sermon on penitence 
which terrified them. " My sister," one said on their re- 
turn, " it was all true ; we must do penance or we are lost. 
But, my sister, what shall we do ? " After having well 
turned it over, "My sister," replied the other, "This is 
what we must do — we must make our servants fast." 
When Moore's Life of Byron first appeared, it was in two 
large, quarto volumes, and the first came out alone. 
Murray told Leslie that a lady said to him, " I hear it is 
dull ; " and he told her the scandal was all to be in the 
second volume. " And is the second volume to be had 
separately?" asked the lady. I was once, says a writer, 
passing through Moorfields, with a young girl, aged about 
nine or ten years, born and educated in Portugal, but in 
the Protestant faith ; and, observing a large concourse of 
people assembled around a pile of fagots on fire, I ex- 
pressed a curiosity to know the cause. She very com- 
posedly answered, " I suppose that it is nothing more than 



EXTREMES. 35 

that they are going to burn a Jew." Isabella the Catho- 
lic was wont to rejoice and give thanks at the sight of a 
gallows with a man hanging therefrom. Charlotte Cush- 
man related an incident that occurred at a theatre. A 
man in the gallery made such a disturbance that the play 
could not proceed. Cries of "Throw him over," arose 
from all parts of the house, and the noise became furious. 
All was tumultuous chaos until a sweet and gentle female 
voice was heard in the pit, exclaiming, "No! I pray you 
don't throw him over ! I beg of you, dear friends, don't 
throw him over, but — kill him where he is." It is re- 
corded that after the massacre of St. Bartholomew the 
ladies of the court of Paris went out to examine the long 
row of the bodies of the Huguenot cavaliers who had been 
slain during the tumult, and curiously turning them over, 
when half-stripped of their garments, said to each other, 
" This must have been a charming lover ; that was not 
worth looking at ; " and when a fanatic assassin was 
brought out in the square of the Louvre to undergo dur- 
ing four hours the most frightful tortures which human 
ingenuity or malignity could devise, or the human frame 
endure, all the ladies of the court assembled to witness 
the spectacle, and paid high prices for seats nearest the 
scene of agony. In the Conciergerie, during the Reign 
of Terror, a corridor was common in the day-time to both 
sexes, and here, it is stated, there was as much dressing, 
talking, flirting, and love-making as in the salons of Paris. 
Most of the women contrived to change their dress three 
times a day, though in the interval they had often to wash 
or mend the garment they were about to put on. The 
tone of conversation was gay and animated, and the peo- 
ple seemed bent on proving that though the Reign of 
Terror might imprison and kill them, it could not make 
them dull or disagreeable. 

It is related that Delia Valle, the distinguished Italian 
traveler, had such an absorbing fondness for his wife that, 



36 LIBRARY NOTES. 

when she died, on the shore of the Persian Gulf, he em- 
balmed her body, and spent one whole year conveying it 
back through India to Rome, where he celebrated her 
obsequies by pronouncing a funeral oration, during the 
delivery of which his emotions became so violent as to 
choke his utterance. Not long after, in a fit of anger, he 
killed his coachman, in the area before St. Peter's, while 
the pope was pronouncing a benediction. " I remember," 
says Patmore, in his personal recollections of Hazlitt, 
" having occasionally played at whist with a person who, 
on any occurrence of extraordinary ill-luck, used to lay 
his cards down deliberately, and bite a piece out of the 
back of his hand ! This person was, under ordinary cir- 
cumstances, the very ideal of a 'gentleman ' — bland, pol- 
ished, courteous, forbearing, kind, and self-possessed to 
an extraordinary degree ; and his personal appearance in 
every respect corresponded with his manners and bear- 
ing. Hazlitt's passions sometimes produced similar re- 
sults. I have seen him more than once, at the Fives 
Court in St. Martin Street, on making a bad stroke or 
missing his ball at some critical point of the game, fling 
his racket to the other end of the court, walk deliber- 
ately to the centre, with uplifted hands imprecate the most 
fearful curses on his head, for his stupidity, and then rush 
to the side wall and literally dash his head against it ! " 
Shortly before the Chinese Emperor's death, a gigantic 
image, the goddess of small-pox, was paraded round the 
city of Pekin in solemn procession, and then taken into 
the bed-room of the dying youth, where it was worshiped 
and honored with many propitiatory offerings. As, how- 
ever, the goddess continued obdurate, she was subjected 
to a severe flogging, and finally burned. 

In the early history of New England the law compelled 
the people to attend church, the services commencing at 
nine o'clock and continuing six to eight hours. Near the 
church edifice stood the stocks and the whipping-post, 



EXTREMES. 37 

and a large wooden cage, in which to confine offenders 
against the laws. The congregation had places assigned 
them upon the rude benches, at the annual town-meeting, 
according to their age and social position. A person was 
fined who occupied a seat assigned to another. The boys 
were ordered to sit upon the gallery-stairs, and three con- 
stables were employed to keep them in order. Prominent 
before the assembly, some wretched male or female of- 
fender sat with a scarlet letter on the breast, to denote 
some crime against the stern code. Fleeing the mother- 
country for peace and freedom, the descendants of the 
Puritans persecuted the Quakers, and burnt the incorrigi- 
ble eccentrics of society for witches. 

John Howe's method of conducting public fasts was 
as follows : " He began at nine o'clock with a prayer of 
a quarter of an hour, read and expounded Scripture for 
about three quarters of an hour, prayed an hour, preached 
another hour, then prayed half an hour ; the people then 
sang for about a quarter of an hour, during which he re- 
tired and took a little refreshment; he then went into 
the pulpit again, prayed an hour more, preached another 
hour, and then, with a prayer of half an hour, concluded 
the services." 

The clergy, too, were sometimes victims. An in- 
stance : " The rector of Fittleworth, in Sussex, was dis- 
possessed of his living for Sabbath-breaking ; the fact 
proved against him being, that as he was stepping over 
a stile one Sunday, the button of his breeches came off, 
and he got a tailor in the neighborhood presently to sew 
it on again." 

We are told that at the time Ireland was called the Isle 
of Saints, "when a child was immersed at baptism, it was 
customary not to dip the right arm, to the intent that he 
might strike a more deadly and ungracious blow there- 
with ; and under an opinion, no doubt, that the rest of 
the body would not be responsible at the resurrection for 



38 LIBRARY NOTES. 

anything which had been committed by the unbaptized 
hand. Thus, too, at the baptism, the father took the 
wolves for his gossips, and thought by this profanation 
he was forming an alliance, both for himself and the boy, 
with the fiercest beasts of the woods. The son of a 
chief was baptized in milk ; water was not thought good 
enough, and whisky had not then been invented. They 
used to rob in the beginning of the year as a point of de- 
votion, for the purpose of laying up a good stock of plun- 
der against Easter ; and he whose spoils enabled him to 
furnish the best entertainment at that time was looked 
upon as the best Christian ; so they robbed in emulation 
of each other ; and reconciling their habits to their con- 
science, they persuaded themselves that if robbery, mur- 
der, and rape had been sins, Providence would never put 
such temptations in their way : nay, that the sin would be, 
if they were so ungrateful as not to take advantage of a 
good opportunity when it was offered them." 

In North Wales, it is stated, when a person supposes 
himself highly injured, it is not uncommon for him to go 
to some church dedicated to a celebrated saint, as Llan 
Elian in Anglesea, and Clynog in Carnarvonshire, and 
there to offer his enemy. He kneels down on his bare 
knees in the church, and offering a piece of money to 
the saint, calls down curses and misfortunes upon the 
offender and his family for generations to come, in the 
most firm belief that the imprecations will be fulfilled. 
Sometimes they repair to a sacred well instead of a 
church. 

Mrs. Gaskell, in her biography of Charlotte Bronte, 
tells of a squire of distinguished family and large prop- 
erty, who died at his house, not far from Haworth, not 
many years ago. His great amusement and occupation 
had been cock-fighting. When he was confined to his 
chamber with what he knew would be his last illness, he 
had his cocks brought up there, and watched the bloody 



EXTREMES. 39 

battle from his bed. As his mortal disease increased 
and it became impossible for him to turn so as to follow 
the combat, he had looking-glasses arranged in such a 
manner around and above him, as he lay, that he could 
still see the cocks fighting. And in this manner he 
died. 

" Qualities," says Helps, " are often inserted in a char- 
acter in the most curious and inharmonious way; and 
the end is that you have a man who is the strangest mixt- 
ure of generosity and meanness, of kindness and severity, 
even of dishonesty and nobleness. Then the passions 
enter. Sometimes these just fit in, unfortunately, with 
good points of character, — so that one man may be ru- 
ined by a passion which another and a worse man would 
have escaped unhurt from. Then there are the circum- 
stances to which a character is exposed, and which vary 
so much that it hardly seems that people are living in the 
same world, so different are to them the outward things 
they have to contend with. Altogether, the human being 
becomes such a complicated creature, that though at last 
you may know something about some one specimen, — 
what it will say and what it will do on a given occasion, 
— you never know enough about the creature to condemn 
it." " Neither the vices nor the virtues of man," says 
Taine, " are his nature ; to praise or to blame him is not 
to know him ; approbation or disapprobation does not 
define him ; the names of good or bad tell us nothing of 
what he is. Put the robber Cartouche in an Italian court 
of the fifteenth century ; he would be a great statesman. 
Transport this nobleman, stingy and narrow-minded, into 
a shop ; he will be an exemplary tradesman. This pub- 
lic man, of inflexible probity, is in his drawing-room an 
intolerable coxcomb. This father of a family, so humane, 
is an idiotic politician. Change a virtue in its circum- 
stances, and it becomes a vice ; change a vice in its cir- 
cumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same 



40 LIBRARY NOTES. 

quality from two sides ; on one it is a fault, on the other 
a merit. The essential of a man is found concealed far 
below these moral badges. A character is a force, like 
gravity, weight, or steam, capable, as it may happen, of 
pernicious or profitable effects, and which must be defined 
otherwise than by the amount of weight it can lift or the 
havoc it can cause. It is therefore to ignore man, to re- 
duce him to an aggregate of virtues and vices ; it is to 
lose sight in him of all but the exterior and social side ; 
it is to neglect the inner and natural element." 

" The character of the French nation," says De Tocque- 
ville, "is so peculiar that the study of human nature 
in general does not embrace it ; those even who have most 
studied it are continually taken by surprise ; for our na- 
tion is gifted beyond any other with capacity to appreci- 
ate great things, and even to do them ; it is equal to any 
single effort, however extraordinary, but unable to remain 
strung up to a high pitch for any length of time ; because 
we act upon impulse, not on principle, and our instincts 
are better than our moral qualities • we are the most civ- 
ilized people in the world, and yet, in certain respects, 
we have retained more of the savage than any other na- 
tion ; for the great characteristic of the savage is, to be 
influenced by the sudden impressions of the present, with- 
out recollection of the past or thought of the future." 

" Recollect that village of the Limousin," said a mem- 
ber of the National Convention during the Reign of Ter- 
ror, " from the top of whose steeple the tri-color flag 
suddenly disappeared. A violent disturbance was in- 
stantly raised ; search was made for the daring offender, 
who could not be found, and in consequence a dozen 
persons were instantly arrested on suspicion. At length 
the fragments of the flag were discovered suspended from 
the branches of a tree, and it was found that a magpie 
had made its nest with the remains of the national color. 
Oh ! the tyrannical bird ! they seized it, cut off its head, 



EXTREMES. 4 1 

and transmitted the evidence of the act to the Conven- 
tion. We received it without bursting into laughter ; had 
any one ventured to indulge himself in that way, he would 
have run the risk of perishing on the public scaffold." 

" In all the courts of ancient philosophy this is to be 
found," says Montaigne, "that the same lecturer there 
publishes the rules of temperance, and at the same time 
discourses of love and wantonness." " I know not," said 
the courtesan Lais, "what they talk of books, wisdom, 
and philosophy; but these men knock as often at my 
door as any others." Says Bayle, in his Critical Diction- 
ary, " It was reported that Pericles turned out his wife, 
and lodged with the famous Aspasia, and plunged him- 
self into lewdness, and spent a great part of his estate 
upon her. She was a woman of so great parts that Soc- 
rates went to see her, and carried his friends with him ; 
and, to speak more clearly, she taught him rhetoric and 
politics. That which is most strange is, that those who 
frequented her carried their wives to her house, that they 
might hear her discourses and lectures, though she kept 
several courtesans at home. Pericles went to see As- 
pasia twice a day, and kissed her when he went in and 
when he came out; which was before he married her. 
She was accused of two crimes by the comedian Hermip- 
pus. He made himself a party against her in due form, 
and accused her before the judges of impiety, and of 
drawing women into her house to satisfy the lust of Peri- 
cles. During the trial of Aspasia, Pericles used so many 
entreaties with the judges, and shed so many tears, ac- 
cording to ^Eschines, that he obtained her absolution. 
The Athenians said that Phidias, the most excellent 
sculptor in the world, and surveyor-general of all the 
works which Pericles ordered to be made for the orna- 
ment of the city, drew in the ladies under pretense of 
showing them the works of the greatest masters ; but in 
truth to debauch and deliver them to Pericles." The 



42 LIBRARY NOTES. 

golden statue of Minerva, it should be remembered, was 
the workmanship of Phidias, and his name was inscribed 
upon the pedestal. Through the friendship of Pericles 
he had the direction of everything, and all the artists re- 
ceived his orders. For this, said Plutarch, the one was 
envied, and the other slandered. 

" Good and bad men are each less so than they seem." 
" When man's first incense rose above the plain, 
Of earth's two altars, one was built'by Cain." 

" As there is," said Coleridge, " much beast and some 
devil in man, so is there some angel and some God in 
man. The beast and the devil may be conquered, but in 
this life never destroyed." " I have ever delighted," said 
Boswell, " in that intellectual chemistry which can sepa- 
rate good qualities from evil in the same person." 

" The first lesson of history," says Emerson, " is the 
good of evil. Good is a good doctor, but Bad is some- 
times a better. 'T is the oppressions of William the Nor- 
man, savage forest-laws, and crushing despotism, that 
made possible the inspirations of Magna Charta under 
John. Edward I. wanted money, armies, castles, and as 
much as he could get. It was necessary to call the peo- 
ple together by shorter, swifter ways, — and the House 
of Commons arose. To obtain subsidies, he paid in 
privileges. In the twenty-fourth year of his reign he de- 
creed, ' that no tax should be levied without consent of 
Lords and Commons;' which is the basis of the English 
Constitution. Plutarch affirms that the cruel wars which 
followed the march of Alexander, introduced the civility, 
language, and arts of Greece into the savage East ; intro- 
duced marriage ; built seventy cities ; and united hostile 
nations under one government. The barbarians who 
broke up the Roman empire did not arrive a day too 
soon. Schiller says, the Thirty Years' War made Ger- 
many a nation. Rough, selfish despots serve man im- 
mensely, as Henry VIII. in the contest with the pope j 



EXTREMES. 43 

as the infatuations no less than the wisdom of Cromwell ; 
as the ferocity of the Russian czars \ as the fanaticism of 
the French regicides of 1789. The frost which kills the 
harvest of a year, saves the harvests of a century, by de- 
stroying the weevil or the locust. Wars, fires, plagues, 
break up immovable routine, clear the ground of rotten 
races, and dens of distemper, and open a fair field to 
new men. There is a tendency in things to right them- 
selves, and the war or revolution or bankruptcy that shat- 
ters a rotten system, allows things to take a new and nat- 
ural order." " Steam was, till the other day, the devil 
which we dreaded. Every pot made by any human potter 
or brazier had a hole in its cover, to let off the enemy, 
lest he should lift pot and roof, and carry the house 
away. But the Marquis of Worcester, Watt, and Fulton 
bethought themselves, that, where was power, was not 
devil, but was God ; that it must be availed of, and not 
by any means let off and wasted. Could he lift pots and 
roofs so handily ? he was the workman they were in 
search of." 

It is related of Hart, a Baptist minister, that he was so 
good a preacher and so bad a liver that it was said to 
him once, " Mr. Hart, when I hear you in the pulpit, I 
wish you were never out of it \ when I see you out of it, 
I wish you were never in it." One Mr. Nicholls, a York- 
shire clergyman in the days immediately succeeding the 
Reformation, who was "much addicted to drinking and 
company-keeping," used to say to his companions, "You 
must not heed me but when I am got three feet above 
the earth," that was, into the pulpit. " I have heard of 
a witty parson," says Dr. Beattie, " who having been dis- 
missed for irregularities, used afterward, in conversation, 
to say, that he thanked God he was not cashiered for 
ignorance and insufficiency, but only for vice and immo- 
rality." Foster, in a note to one of his Essays, refers to 
a Spanish story of a village where the devil, having made 



44 LIBRARY NOTES. 

the people excessively wicked, was punished by being 
compelled to assume the appearance and habit of a friar, 
and to preach so eloquently, in spite of his internal repug- 
nance and rage, that the inhabitants were completely 
reformed. 

Cotton Mather has preserved a choice specimen of in- 
vective against Dr. Owen, by one of the primitive Quak- 
ers, whose name was Fisher. It was, says Southey, a 
species of rhetoric in which they indulged freely, and ex- 
ceeded all other sectarians. Fisher addressed him thus : 
"Thou fiery fighter and green-headed trumpeter; thou 
hedgehog and grinning dog ; thou bastard, that tumbled 
out of the mouth of the Babylonish bawd; thou mole; 
thou tinker ; thou lizard ; thou bell of no metal, but the 
tone of a kettle ; thou wheelbarrow ; thou whirlpool ; thou 
whirligig ; oh, thou firebrand ; thou adder and scorpion ; 
thou louse ; thou cow-dung ; thou moon-calf ; thou ragged 
tatterdemalion ; thou Judas : thou livest in philosophy 
and logic, which are of the devil." Mather in turn was 
alike severe upon the Quakers. He applied to them 
such language as " upstart sect ; '■. " sink of all heresies ; " 
"the grossest collection of blasphemies and confusions 
that ever was heard of ;" "dangerous villains ;" "choke- 
weed of Christianity;" "the quaking which distinguished 
these poor creatures was a symptom of diabolical posses- 
sion ; " " devil-driven creatures ; " " for pride, and hypoc- 
risy, and hellish reviling against the painful ministers of 
Christ, I know no people can match them." " He was a 
wise and a good counsellor in Plymouth-colony, who pro- 
pounded • that a law might be made for the Quakers to 
have their heads shaved.' I confess," he said, "the 
punishment was in some sort capital ; but it would have 
been the best remedy for them ; it would have both 
sham'd and cur'd them." He quotes some choice lan- 
guage of Penn — "Thou gormandizing Priest, one of the 
abominable tribe ; thou bane of reason ; thou pest, to be 



EXTREMES. 45 

spared of mankind ; thou mountebank Priest " — and says, 
" these are the very words (I wrong them not !) which 
they vomit out against the best men in the English nation, 
that have been so hardy as to touch their ' light within : ' 
but let the quills of these porcupines fly as fast as they 
will, I shall not feel them." The good Luther was a 
violent saint sometimes. Hear him express himself on 
the Catholic divines : " The papists are all asses, and 
will always remain asses. Put them in whatever sauce 
you choose, boiled, roasted, baked, fried, skinned, beat, 
hashed, they are always the same asses." Hear him salute 
the pope : "The pope was born out of the devil's posteriors. 
He is full of devils, lies, blasphemies, and idolatries ; he is 
Antichrist ; the robber of churches ; the ravisher of vir- 
gins ; the greatest of pimps ; the governor of Sodom, etc. 
If the Turks lay hold of us, then we shall be in the hands 
of the devil ; but if we remain with the pope, we shall be 
in hell. What a pleasing sight would it be to see the pope 
and the cardinals hanging on one gallows, in exact order, 
like the seals which dangle from the bulls of the pope ! 
What an excellent council would they hold under the gal- 
lows ! " And hear him upon Henry VIII. : " It is hard to 
say if folly can be more foolish, or stupidity more stupid, 
than is the head of Henry. He has not attacked me with 
the heart of a king, but with the impudence of a knave. 
This rotten worm of the earth, having blasphemed the 
majesty of my King, I have a just right to bespatter his 
English majesty with his own dirt and ordure. This 
Henry has lied." The good Calvin was alike violent. He 
hated Catholic and Lutheran. " His adversaries are never 
others than knaves, lunatics, drunkards, and assassins. 
Sometimes they are characterized by the familiar appel- 
latives of bulls, asses, cats, and hogs." Beza, the disci- 
ple of Calvin, imitated his master. Upon a Lutheran 
minister, Tilleman, he bestowed these titles of honor: 
" Polyphemus ; an ape ; a great ass who is distinguished 



46 LIBRARY NOTES. 

from other asses by wearing a hat; an ass on two feet ; 
a monster composed of part of an ape and wild ass ; a 
villain who merits hanging on the first tree we find." As 
to the Catholics, there is no end to the anathemas and 
curses of the Fathers. 

One of the old bishops called anger "the sinews of 
the soul." It helped to fortify the rugged reformer in his 
conflicts, and illuminated the perilous way he trod. " We 
oft by lightning read in darkest nights." It is said the 
finest wine is pressed from vintages which grow on fields 
once inundated with lava. " I never work better," said 
Luther, " than when I am inspired by anger ; when I 
am angry I can write, pray, and preach well ; for then 
my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding 
sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations 
depart." " No one can suppose," said Bulwer, " that 
Calvin did not deem that the angels smiled approbation 
when he burned Servetus. No one can suppose that 
when Torquemada devised the Inquisition, he did not 
conscientiously believe that the greatest happiness of the 
greatest number could be best secured by selecting a few 
for a roast." Burke said, " a vigorous mind is as necessa- 
rily accompanied with violent passions as a great fire with 
great heat." "It is the strong passions," said Helve- 
tius, " which, rescuing us from sloth, can alone impart 
to us that continuous and earnest attention necessary to 
great intellectual efforts." " No revolution (in public sen- 
timent), civil or religious," said Sir Gilbert Elliot, " can 
be accomplished without that degree of ardor and pas- 
sion which, in a later age, will be matter of ridicule to 
men who do not feel the occasion, and enter into the 
spirit of the times." "The man who succeeds," said a 
British reviewer, " is generally the narrow man, the man 
of one idea, who works at nothing but that ; sees every- 
thing only through the light of that ; sacrifices everything 
to that ; the fanatic, in short. By fanatics, whether mili 



EXTREMES. 47 

tary, commercial, or religious, and not by ' liberal-minded 
men ' at all, has the world's work been done in all ages." 
"Our passions," said John Norris, "were given us to 
perfect and accomplish our natures, though by accidental 
misapplications to unworthy objects they may turn to 
our degradation and dishonor. We may, indeed, be de- 
based as well as ennobled by them ; but then the fault is 
not in the large sails, but in the ill conduct of the pilot, 
if our vessel miss the haven." When one commended a 
certain king of Sparta for a gentle, a good, and a meek 
prince, his colleague said, " How can he be good who is 
not an enemy even to vicious persons ? " Erasmus said 
of Luther that there were two natures in him : sometimes 
he wrote like an apostle, sometimes like a raving ribald. 
"When he was angry, invectives rushed from him like 
bowlder rocks down a mountain torrent in flood." " The 
same man," said Heine, of Luther, " who could scold 
like a fish-wife could be as gentle as a tender maiden. 
At times he was as fierce as the storm that uproots oaks ; 
and then again he was as mild as the zephyr caressing 
the violets The refinement of Erasmus, the mild- 
ness of Melancthon, could never have brought us so far 
as the godlike brutality of Brother Martin." But there 
was no trace of vanity about him. " Do not call your- 
selves Lutherans," he said; "call yourselves Christians. 
Who and what is Luther? Has Luther been crucified 
for the world ? " 

" The Latin tongue," says Montaigne, " is, as it were, 
natural to me ; I understand it better than French, but I 
have not used to speak it, nor hardly to write it, these 
forty years ; and yet, upon an extreme and sudden emo- 
tion, which I have fallen into twice or thrice in my life, 
and once on seeing my father in perfect health, fall upon 
me in a swoon, I have always uttered my first outcries 
and ejaculations in Latin ; nature starting up and forci- 
bly expressing itself, in spite of so long a discontinua- 



48 LIBRARY NOTES. 

tion." "Nature," says Bacon, "will be buried a great 
time, and yet revive upon the occasion or temptation ; 
like as it was with ^Esop's damsel, turned from a cat to a 
woman, who sat very demurely at the board's end till a 
mouse ran before her." "A frog," said Publius Syrus, 
" would leap from a throne of gold into a puddle." In 
Froissart's Chronicles there is an account of a reverend 
monk who had been a robber in the early part of his life, 
md who, when he grew old, used feelingly to lament that 
he had ever changed his profession. He said " it was a 
goodly sight to sally out from his castle, and to see a troop 
of jolly friars coming riding that way, with their mules 
well laden with viands and rich stores, to advance to- 
ward them, to attack and overthrow them, returning to 
the castle with a noble booty." Layard relates an inci- 
dent of the party of Arabs which for some time had been 
employed to assist him in excavating amongst the ruins 
of Nineveh. One evening, after their day's work, he ob- 
served them following a flock of sheep belonging to the 
people of the village, shouting their war-cry, flourishing 
their swords, and indulging in the most extravagant ges- 
ticulations. He asked one of the most active of the party 
to explain to him the cause of such violent proceedings. 
M O Bey ! " they exclaimed almost together, " God be 
praised, we have eaten butter and wheaten bread under 
your shadow, and are content ; but an Arab is an Arab. It 
is not for a man to carry about dirt in baskets, and to use 
a spade all his life ; he should be with his sword and his 
mare in the desert. We are sad as we think of the days 
when we plundered the Anayza, and we must have excite- 
ment or our hearts must break. Let us then believe that 
these are the sheep we have taken from the enemy, and 
that we are driving them to our tents." And off they ran, 
raising their wild cry, and flourishing their swords, to the 
no small alarm of the shepherd, who saw his sheep scam- 
pering in all directions. Hazlitt related an Indian legend 



EXTREMES. 49 

of a Brahman, who was so devoted to abstract meditation, 
that in the pursuit of philosophy he quite forgot his moral 
duties, and neglected ablution. For this he was degraded 
from the rank of humanity, and transformed into a mon- 
key. But even when a monkey he retained his original 
propensities, for he kept apart from other monkeys, and 
had no other delight than that of eating cocoanuts and 
studying metaphysics. " Perhaps few narratives in his- 
tory or mythology," says Carlyle, " are more significant 
than that Moslem one of Moses and the Dwellers by the 
Dead Sea. A tribe of men dwelt on the shores of that 
same asphaltic lake ; and having forgotten, as we are all 
too prone to do, the inner facts of Nature, and taken up 
with the falsities and other semblances of it, were fallen 
into sad conditions, — verging, indeed, toward a certain 
far deeper lake. Whereupon it pleased kind Heaven to 
send them the prophet Moses, with an instructive word 
of warning out of which might have sprung l remedial 
measures ' not a few. But no : the men of the Dead Sea 
discovered, as the valet-species always does in heroes or 
prophets, no comeliness in Moses ; listened with real te- 
dium to Moses, with light grinning, or splenetic sniffs and 
sneers, affecting even to yawn ; and signified, in short, 
that they found him a humbug, and even a bore. Such 
was the candid theory these men of the asphalt lake 
formed to themselves of Moses, that probably he was a 
humbug, that certainly he was a bore. Moses withdrew ; 
but Nature and her rigorous veracities did not withdraw. 
The men of the Dead Sea, when we next went to visit 
them, were all changed into apes, sitting on the trees 
there, grinning now in the most unaffected manner ; gib- 
bering and chattering very genuine nonsense ; finding the 
whole universe now a most indisputable humbug ! The 
universe has become a humbug to those apes who thought 
it one. There they sit and chatter, to this hour : only, I 
believe, every Sabbath, there returns to them a bewil- 
4 



50 LIBRARY NOTES. 

dered half-consciousness, half-reminiscence ; and they sit 
with their wizened, smoke-dried visages, and such an air 
of supreme tragicality as apes may, looking out through 
those blinking, smoke-bleared eyes of theirs, into the 
wonderfulest universal smoky twilight and undecipher- 
able disordered dusk of things ; wholly an uncertainty, 
unintelligibility, they and it, and for commentary thereon, 
here and there an unmusical chatter or mew, — truest, 
tragicalest humbug conceivable by the mind of man or 
ape ! They made no use of their souls ; and so have lost 
them. Their worship on the Sabbath now is to roost 
there, with unmusical screeches, and half-remember that 
they had souls." The shark is said to have been the god 
the Sandwich Islanders, in their savage state, chiefly wor- 
shiped, or sought to propitiate. In their present semi- 
civilized, semi-Christianized condition, it is stated, they 
pray, and sing, and moralize, in fair weather ; but when 
they get into trouble they are apt to call upon the shark- 
god of their fathers for help or deliverance. 

Sir Walter Scott used to tell a story of a placid min- 
ister, near Dundee, who, in preaching on Jonah, said, 
" Ken ye, brethren, what fish it was that swallowed him ? 
Aiblins ye may think it was a shark ; nae, nae, my breth- 
ren, it was nae shark ; or aiblins ye may think it was a 
sammon ; nae, nae, my brethren, it was nae sammon ; or 
aiblins ye may think it was a dolphin ; nae, nae, my 
brethren, it was nae dolphin." Here an old woman, 
thinking to help her master out of a dead lift, cried out, 
"Aiblins, sir, it was a dunter " (the vulgar name of a 
species of whale common to the Scotch coast). "Aib- 
lins, madam, ye 're an auld witch for taking the word of 
God out of my mouth," was the reply of the disappointed 
rhetorician. As Dr. Johnson was riding in a carriage 
through London on a rainy day, he overtook a poor 
woman carrying a baby, without any protection from the 
weather. Making the driver stop the coach, he invited 



EXTREMES. 5 1 

the poor woman to get in with her child, which she did. 
After she had seated herself, the doctor said to her, " My 
good woman, I think it most likely that the motion of the 
coach will wake your child in a little while, and I wish 
you to understand that if you talk any baby-talk to it, you 
will have to get out of the coach." As the doctor had 
anticipated, the child soon awoke, and the forgetful 
mother exclaimed to it : " Oh ! the little dear, is he going 
to open his eyesy-pysy ? " " Stop the coach, driver ! " 
shouted Johnson ; and the woman had to get out and 
finish her journey on foot. Frederick William, of Prus- 
sia, father of the great Frederick, had a way of address- 
ing, familiarly, the people he met in the streets of Berlin, 
utterly indifferent, we are told, to his own dignity and to 
the feelings of others ; if he could devise something that 
was not quite agreeable, it was sure to be said. The fear 
of such encounters sometimes made nervous people in- 
discreetly evade the royal presence. One Jew having 
fairly taken to his heels, he was pursued by the king in 
hot haste. " Why did you run away from me ? " said the 
king, when he came up with him in breathless dudgeon. 
11 From fear," answered the Jew, in the most ingenuous 
manner; but the rejoinder of the king was a hearty 
thwack with his cane, who roared out that he wished 
himself to be loved and not to be feared ! 

A writer upon Holland — its Martyrs and Heroes, 
gives an account of Richard Willemson, a worthy bur- 
gess of Aspern, and an Anabaptist, who was chased by 
an officer of justice. It was a winter day, and he fled 
across the ice. The frozen surface, however, was so thin 
that the fugitive had the utmost difficulty in crossing, and 
his pursuer fell through. Perceiving his danger, Willem- 
son returned and at the risk of his own life saved his 
enemy. Touched with such generosity, the officer woilld 
gladly have let his prisoner go ; but the burgomaster, who 
witnessed the occurrence, called out, " Fulfil your oath," 
and the good Christian was led away to a fiery martyrdom. 



52 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Dr. Livingstone, when he first went into Africa, as a 
missionary, attached himself to the tribe of Bakwains. 
Their chief, Sechele, embraced Christianity, and became 
an assiduous reader of the Bible, the eloquence of Isaiah 
being peculiarly acceptable to him, and he was wont to 
say, " He was a fine man, that Isaiah : he knew how to 
speak." But his people were not so ready for conversion, 
although he calmly proposed to have them flogged into 
faith: "Do you imagine," he said, "these people will 
ever believe by your merely talking to them ? I can 
make them do nothing except by thrashing them ; and if 
you like I shall call my head men, and with our litupa 
(whips of rhinoceros hide) we will soon make them be- 
lieve altogether." It has been stated upon authority that 
when a fugitive from one of the early missions in New 
California was captured, he was brought back again to 
the mission, where he was bastinadoed, and an iron rod 
of a foot or a foot and a half long, and an inch in di- 
ameter, was fastened to one of his feet, which had the 
double use of preventing him from repeating the attempt, 
and of frightening others from imitating him. Southey 
says that one of the missionaries whom Virgilius, the 
bishop of Salzburg, sent among the Slavonic people, 
made the converted serfs sit with him at table, where 
wine was served to them in gilt beakers, while he ordered 
their unbaptized lords to sit on the ground, out of doors, 
where the food and wine was thrown before them, and 
they were left to serve themselves. Among our Norse 
forefathers, King Olaf's mode of converting Eyvind to 
Christianity was to put a pan of glowing coals on his 
belly, which burst asunder. " Wilt thou not, Eyvind, be- 
lieve in Christ ? " asks Olaf, in excellent faith. Another 
argument was an adder put into the mouth of the reluc- 
tant disciple Rand, who refused to believe. 

" Seeing a large building," relates an English gentle- 
man, " I asked a man who looked like a journeyman 



EXTREMES. 53 

weaver what it was. He told me a grammar-school. 
' But, sir,' he added, ' I think it would become you better 
on the Lord's day morning to be reading your Bible at 
home, than asking about public buildings.' I very quickly 
answered : ' My friend, you have given me a piece of 
very good advice ; let me give you one, and we may both 
profit by our meeting. Beware of spiritual pride.' " " In 
one of the debates on the Catholic question," said Lord 
Byron, " when we were either equal or within one (I for- 
get which), I had been sent for in great haste to a ball, 
which I quitted, I confess, somewhat reluctantly, to 
emancipate five millions of people." Some ladies ban- 
tering Selwyn on his want of feeling, in attending to see 
Lord Lovat's head cut off, "Why," he said, "I made 
amends by going to the undertaker's to see it sewn on 
again." " I have," says Heine, "the most peaceable dis- 
position. My desires are a modest cottage with thatched 
roof — but a good bed, good fare, fresh milk and butter, 
flowers by my window, and a few fine trees before the 
door. And if the Lord wished to fill my cup of happi- 
ness, He would grant me the pleasure of seeing some six 
or seven of my enemies hanged on those trees. With a 
heart moved to pity, I would, before their death, forgive 
the injury they had done me during their lives. Yes, we 
ought to forgive our enemies — but not until they are 
hanged." Some would pursue them after they are hanged. 
" Our measure of rewards and punishments," says Thack- 
eray, " is most partial and incomplete, absurdly inade- 
quate, utterly worldly, and we wish to continue it into 
the next world. Into that next and awful world we strive 
to pursue men, and send after them our impotent party 
verdicts, of condemnation or acquittal. We set up our 
paltry little rods to measure Heaven immeasurable, as if, 
in comparison to that, Newton's mind, or Pascal's, or 
Shakespeare's, was any loftier than mine \ as if the ray 
which travels from the sun would reach me sooner than 



54 LIBRARY NOTES. 

the man who blacks my boots. Measured by that alti- 
tude, the tallest and the smallest among us are so alike 
diminutive and pitifully base that I say we should take 
no count of the calculation, and it is a meanness to 
reckon the difference." 

Tertullian, according to Lecky, had written a treatise 
dissuading the Christians of his day from frequenting the 
public spectacles. He had collected on the subject many 
arguments, some of them very powerful, and others ex- 
tremely grotesque ; but he perceived that to make his ex- 
hortations forcible to the majority of his readers, he must 
point them to some counter-attraction. He accordingly 
proceeded — and his style assumed a richer glow and a 
more impetuous eloquence as he rose to the congenial 
theme — to tell them that a spectacle was reserved for 
them, so fascinating and so attractive that the most joy- 
ous festivals of earth faded in insignificance by the com- 
parison. That spectacle was the agonies of their fellow- 
countrymen as they writhe amid the torments of hell. 
" What ! " he exclaimed, " shall be the magnitude of that 
scene ! How shall I wonder ! How shall I laugh ! How 
shall I rejoice ! How shall I triumph, when I behold so 
many and such illustrious kings, who were said to have 
mounted into heaven, groaning with Jupiter their god in 
the lowest darkness of hell ! Then shall the soldiers 
who had persecuted the name of Christ burn in more 
cruel fire than any they had kindled for the saints. Then 
shall the tragedians pour forth in their own misfortune 
more piteous cries than those with which they had made 
the theatre to resound, while the comedian's powers shall 
be better seen as he becomes more flexible by the heat. 
Then shall the driver of the circus stand forth to view, 
all blushing in his flaming chariot, and the gladiators 
pierced, not by spears, but by darts of fire. Compared 
with such spectacles, with such subjects of triumph as 
these, what can praetor or consul, quaestor or pontiff, af- 



EXTREMES. 



55 



ford ? And even now faith can bring them near, imagi- 
nation can depict them as present ! " 

Crabb Robinson says some one at a party at which he 
was present, abusing Mahometanism in a commonplace 
way, said : " Its heaven is quite material." He was 
met with the quiet remark, " So is the Christian's hell ;" 
to which there was no reply. In the time of Tertullian, 
the angel in the Last Judgment was constantly repre- 
sented weighing the souls in a literal balance, while devils 
clinging to the scales endeavored to disturb the equilib- 
rium. The redbreast, according to one popular legend, 
was commissioned by the Deity to carry a drop of water 
to the souls of unbaptized infants in hell, and its breast 
was singed in piercing the flames. In Wales, the robin 
is said to bear in its bill one drop of water daily to the 
place of torment, in order to extinguish the flames. 

A Calvin istic divine, of the name of Petit Pierre, was 
ejected from his church at Neufchatel for preaching and 
publishing the doctrine that the damned would at some 
future period be pardoned. A member said to him, " My 
good friend, I no more believe in the eternity of hell 
than yourself ; but recollect that it may be no bad thing, 
perhaps, for your servant, your tailor, and your lawyer, 
to believe in it." Whitefield was once preaching in Ha- 
worth, and made use of some such expression, as that he 
" hoped there was no need to say much to this congrega- 
tion, as they had sat under so pious and godly a minister 
for so many years ; " whereupon Mr. Grimshaw, the cu- 
rate, stood up in his place, and said with a loud voice, 
" Oh, sir ! for God's sake do not speak so. I pray you 
do not flatter them. I fear the greater part of them are 
going to hell with their eyes open." Cowper's friend, 
Newton, says this in one of his letters : " A friend of 
mine was desired to visit a woman in prison ; he was in- 
formed of her evil habits of life, and therefore spoke 
strongly of the terrors of the Lord, and the curses of the 



56 LIBRARY NOTES. 

law : she heard him a while, and then laughed in his 
face ; upon this he changed his note, and spoke of the 
Saviour, and what he had done and suffered for sinners. 
He had not talked long in this strain before he saw a 
tear or two in her eyes : at length she interrupted him by 
saying: 'Why, sir, do you think there can be any hope 
of mercy for me ? ' He answered, ' Yes, if you feel your 
need of it, and are willing to seek it in God's appointed 
way. I am sure it is as free for you as for myself.' She 
replied, ' Ah, if I had thought so, I should not have been 
in this prison. I long since settled it in my mind that I 
was utterly lost ; that I had sinned beyond all possibility 
of forgiveness, and that made me desperate.' " Monod 
relates that the Moravian missionaries who carried the 
gospel to the Greenlanders thought it best to prepare 
the minds of the savages to receive it, by declaring to 
them at first only the general truths of religion ; the ex- 
istence of God, the obedience due to his laws, and a 
future retribution. Thus passed away several years, dur- 
ing which they saw no fruit of their labors. At last they 
ventured one day to speak to them of the Saviour, and 
read to them the history of his passion. They had no 
sooner done so, than one of the hearers, named Kajar- 
nak, approached the table where the missionary Beck 
was sitting, and said to him in an earnest, affecting tone : 
" What is that you tell us ? Repeat that once more. I 
too will be saved ! " (" The most awfully tremendous of 
all metaphysical divines," wrote an eminent Englishman, 
"is the American ultra Calvinist, Jonathan Edwards, 
whose book on Original Sin I unhappily read when a 
very young man. It did me an irreparable mischief.") 

" Soon after the accession of James I. to the throne of 
England," writes Lecky, in his History of Rationalism in 
Europe, " a law was enacted which subjected witches to 
death on the first conviction, even though they should 
have inflicted no injury upon their neighbors. This law 



EXTREMES. 57 

was passed when Coke was attorney general, and Bacon 
a member of Parliament ; and twelve bishops sat upon 
the commission to which it was referred. The prosecu- 
tions were rapidly multiplied throughout the country, but 
especially in Lancashire, and at the same time the gen- 
eral tone of literature was strongly tinged with the super- 
stition. Sir Thomas Browne declared that those who 
denied the existence of witchcraft were not only ' infidels 
but also, by implication, atheists.' In Cromwell's time 
there was still greater persecution. The county of Suf- 
folk was especially agitated, and the famous witch-finder, 
Matthew Hopkins, pronounced it to be infested with 
witches. A commission was accordingly issued, and two 
distinguished Presbyterian divines were selected by the 
Parliament to accompany it. It would have been impos- 
sible to take any measure more calculated to stimulate 
the prosecutions, and we accordingly find that in Suffolk 
sixty persons were hung for witchcraft in a single year. 
In 1664 two women were hung in Suffolk, under a sen- 
tence of Sir Matthew Hale, who took the opportunity of 
declaring that the reality of witchcraft was unquestion- 
able ; ' for, first, the Scriptures had affirmed so much ; 
and, secondly, the wisdom of all nations had provided 
laws against such persons, which is an argument of their 
confidence of such a crime.' Sir Thomas Browne, who 
was a great physician, as well as a great writer, was 
called as a witness, and swore 'that he was clearly of 
opinion that the persons were bewitched.' " 

Here is a terrible story, perfectly well authenticated, 
taken from the official report of the proceedings by an 
English historian : " Toward the end of 1593 there was 
trouble in the family of the Earl of Orkney. His brother 
laid a plot to murder him, and was said to have sought 
the help of a notorious witch called Alison Balfour. 
When Alison Balfour's life was looked into, no evidence 
could be found connecting her either with the particular 



58 LIBRARY NOTES. 

offense or with witchcraft in general • but it was enough 
in these matters to be accused. She swore she was inno- 
cent; but her guilt was only held to be aggravated by- 
perjury. She was tortured again and again. Her legs 
were put in the caschilaws, — an iron frame which was 
gradually heated till it burned into the flesh, — but no 
confession could be wrung from her. The caschilaws 
failed utterly, and something else had to be tried. She 
had a husband, a son, and a daughter, a child seven 
years old. As her own sufferings did not work upon 
her, she might be touched, perhaps, by the suffering of 
those who were dear to her. They were brought into 
court, and placed at her side, and the husband first 
placed in the ' long irons ' — some accursed instrument, 
I know not what. Still the devil did not yield. She 
bore this ; and her son was next operated on. The boy's 
legs were set in 'the boot,' — the iron boot you may have 
heard of. The wedges were driven in, which, when forced 
home, crushed the very bone and marrow. Fifty-seven 
mallet strokes were delivered upon the wedges. Yet this, 
too, failed. There was no confession yet. So, last of 
all, the little daughter was taken. There was a machine 
called the piniwinkies — a kind of thumb-screw, which 
brought blood from under the finger-nails, with a pain suc- 
cessfully terrible. These things were applied to the poor 
child's hands, and the mother's constancy broke down, 
and she said she would admit anything they wished. She 
confessed her witchcraft, — so tried, she would have con- 
fessed to the seven deadly sins, — and then she was 
burned, recalling her confession, and with her last breath 
protested her innocence." 

"There was one Mary Johnson try'd at Hartford in 
this countrey," says Cotton Mather, in his Magnalia 
Christi Americana, " upon an indictment of ' familiarity 
with the devil,' and was found guilty thereof, chiefly upon 
her own confession In the time of her impris- 



EXTREMES 59 

onment, the famous Mr. Stone was at great pains to pro- 
mote her conversion from the devil to God ; and she was 
by the best observers judged very penitent, both before 
her execution and at it ; and she went out of the world 
with comfortable hopes of mercy from God through the 
merit of our Saviour. Being asked what she built her 
hopes upon, she answered, Upon these words : ' Come 
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will 
give you rest ; ' and these : ' There is a fountain set open 
for sin and uncleanness.' And she dy'd in a frame ex- 
treamly to the satisfaction of them that were spectators 
of it." 

In 1768 John Wesley prefaced an account of an ap- 
parition that had been related by a girl named Elizabeth 
Hobson, by some extremely remarkable sentences on the 
subject. " It is true, likewise," he wrote, " that the Eng- 
lish in general, and, indeed, most of the men of learning 
in Europe, have given up all account of witches and appa- 
ritions as mere old wives' fables. I am sorry for it, and 
I willingly take this opportunity of entering my solemn 
protest against this violent compliment which so many 
that believe the Bible pay to those that do not believe it. 
I owe them no such service. I take knowledge that these 
are at the bottom of the outcry which has been raised, 
and with such insolence spread through the land, in di- 
rect opposition, not only to the Bible, but to the suffrage 
of the wisest and best men in all ages and nations. They 
well know (whether Christians know it or not) that the 
giving up of witchcraft is in effect giving up the Bible." 

" In the first year of this persecution, Cotton Mather 
wrote a history of the earliest of the trials. This history 
was introduced to the English public by Richard Baxter, 
who declared in his preface that 'that man must be a 
very obdurate Sadducee who would not believe it.' Not 
content with having thus given the weight of his great 
name to the superstition, Baxter in the following year 



60 LIBRARY NOTES. 

published his treatise on The Certainty of the World of 
Spirits ; in which he collected, with great industry, an 
immense number of witch cases ; reverted in extremely 
laudatory terms to Cotton Mather and his crusade ; and 
denounced, in unmeasured language, all who were skepti- 
cal upon the subject. This work appeared in 169 1, when 
the panic in America had not yet reached its height ; and 
being widely circulated there, is said to have contributed 
much to stimulate the persecutions. The Pilgrim Fathers 
had brought to America the seeds of the persecution ; 
and at the same time when it was rapidly fading in Eng- 
land, it flourished with fearful vigor in Massachusetts. 
Cotton Mather and Parris proclaimed the frequency of 
the crime ; and, being warmly supported by their brother 
divines, they succeeded in creating a panic through the 
whole country. A commission was issued. A judge 
named Stoughton, who appears to have been a perfect 
creature of the clergy, conducted the trials. Scourgings 
and tortures were added to the terrorism of the pulpit, 
and many confessions were obtained. The few who vent- 
ured to oppose the prosecutions were denounced as Sad- 
ducees and infidels. Multitudes were thrown into prison, 
others fled from the country, abandoning their property, 
and twenty-seven persons were executed. An old man of 
eighty was pressed to death — a horrible sentence, which 
was never afterward executed in America. [Giles Corey 
was the name of the poor victim. He refused to plead, 
to save his property from confiscation. He urged the exe- 
cutioners, it is stated by Upham, in his History of Witch- 
craft, to increase the weight which was crushing him; 
he told them that it was no use to expect him to yield ; 
that there could be but one way of ending the matter, and 
that they might as well pile on the stones. Calef says, 
that as his body yielded to the pressure, his tongue pro- 
truded from his mouth, and an official forced it back with 
his cane.] The ministers of Boston and Charlestown 



EXTREMES. 6 1 

drew up an address, warmly thanking the commissioners 
for their zeal, and expressing their hope that it would 
never be relaxed." 

There is no more painful reading than this except the 
trials of the witches themselves. " These," says Lowell, 
" awaken, by turns, pity, indignation, disgust, and dread, 
— dread, at the thought of what the human mind may be 
brought to believe not only probable, but proven. But it 
is well to be put upon our guard by lessons of this kind, 
for the wisest man is in some respects little better than 
a madman in a straight-waistcoat of habit, public opinion, 
prudence, or the like. Skepticism began at length to 
make itself felt, but it spread slowly, and was shy of pro- 
claiming itself. The orthodox party was not backward 
to charge with sorcery whoever doubted their facts or 
pitied their victims. The mob, as it always is, was or- 
thodox. It was dangerous to doubt, it might be fatal to 
deny." 

"The spirit of party," quaintly says Bayle, in his Criti- 
cal Dictionary, discoursing of Margaret, Queen of Na- 
varre, " the attachment to a sect, and even zeal for ortho- 
doxy, produce a kind of ferment in the humors of our 
body ; and hence the medium through which reason ought 
to behold these primitive ideas is clouded and obscured. 
These are infirmities which will attend our reason, as long 
as it shall depend upon the ministry of organs. It is the 
same thing to it, as the low and middle region of the air, 
the seat of vapors and meteors. There are but very few 
persons who can elevate themselves above these clouds, 
and place themselves in a true serenity. If any one 
could do it, we must say of him what Virgil did of 
Daphnis : — 

' Daphnis, the guest of Heaven, with wondering eyes, 
Views in the milky- way the starry skies ; 
And far beneath him, from the shining sphere, 
Beholds the moving clouds and rolling year.' 



62 LIBRARY NOTES. 

And he would not have so much the appearance of a man, 
as of an immortal Being, placed upon a mountain above 
the region of wind and clouds. There is almost as much 
necessity for being above the passions to come to a 
knowledge of some kind of truths, as to act virtuously." 
" How limited is human reason," exclaims Disraeli, the 
younger, " the profoundest inquirers are most conscious. 
We are not indebted to the reason of man for any of the 
great achievements which are the landmarks of human 
action and human progress/ It was not reason that be- 
sieged Troy j it was not reason that sent forth the Sara- 
cen from the desert to conquer the world ; that inspired 
the crusades ; that instituted the monastic orders ; it was 
not reason that produced the Jesuits ; above all, it was 
not reason that enacted the French Revolution. /Man is 
only truly great when he acts from the passions ; never 
irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination./ 
Even Mormon counts more votaries than Bentham. 
" Let us not dream," said Goethe, " that reason can ever 
be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular; 
but reason remains ever the property of an elect few." 
" It is not from reason and prudence that people marry," 
said Dr. Johnson, " but from inclination. A man is poor ; 
he thinks it cannot be worse, and so I '11 e'en marry 
Peggy." " If people," said Thackeray, " only made 
prudent marriages, what a stop to population there would 
be!" 



III. 

DISGUISES. 

Man, poor fellow, would be a curious object for micro- 
scopic study. If it were possible to view him through 
powerful glasses, what humiliating resemblances and in- 
firmities would be discovered. He would be found to 
have innumerable tentacula and appendages, for protec- 
tion and warning, and especially to possess unconceived 
of apparatus for making his way in the dark, — neces- 
sities to him, it would appear, when further inspection 
of the creature had shown him to be — blind. At last, 
he finds himself obliged to rely upon such qualities and 
faculties as take the place of powers and eyes. Cowardly, 
he is gregarious, and will not live alone ; weak, he con- 
sorts with weakness, to acquire strength ; ignorant, he 
contributes the least bit to the common stock of intelli- 
gence, and escapes responsibility. One of many, he has 
the protection of the mob • embodying others' weak- 
nesses, he is strong in the bundle of sticks ; joining his 
voice with the million, it is lost in the confusion of 
tongues. Attacked, he is fortified by his society ; down, 
he will rise again with his fellows ; stupid with the rest, 
his shame is unfelt by being diffused. In any extremity, 
there is safety in counsel ; in the ranks, he cannot run ; 
in the crowd, it were vain to think. Weary of stagnation 
or tired by the eddies, he goes with the current ; unable 
to stand an individual, he joins with a party ; a poor 
creature of God, he is afraid to trust Him on his Word, 
and flies to a sect with a creed for protection. In the 
wake of thought, he may be thoughtless ; voting the 



64 LIBRARY NOTES. 

ticket, he is a patriot; a stiff bigot, there can be no 
doubt about his religion. He submits to be thought for 
as a child ; to be cared for as an invalid ; to be subor- 
dinated as an idiot. Unequal to a scheme of his own, he 
falls into one already devised for him ; without independ- 
ent views, he relies upon his newspaper ; without implicit 
trust in God, he leans upon a broken reed in preference. 
Thus his business, his politics, his religion, are defined 
for him, and are of easy reference ; indeed it may be 
said he knows them by heart, so little there is of them. 
Of the laws of trade, political economy, essential Chris- 
tianity, he may be as ignorant as a barbarian, at the same 
time be complacent and respectable in his ignorance. 
Acting for himself, he would be set down as eccentric by 
his banker ; thinking for himself, he would be thought to 
be too uncertain to be trustworthy ; living virtuously, 
walking humbly, and trusting his Creator to take care of 
his creature, he would be an object of suspicion, even if he 
escaped being called an infidel. His tailor determines the 
cut of his coat; the street defines his manners and morals ; 
custom becomes his law, and compliance his gospel. 

Addison, in The Spectator, gives an account of a gentle- 
man who determined to live and dress according to the 
rules of common sense, and was shut up in a lunatic 
asylum in consequence. "Custom," says Carlyle, "doth 
make dotards of us all. Philosophy complains that 
custom has hoodwinked us from the first; that we do 
everything by custom, even believe by it ; that our very 
axioms, let us boast of free-thinking as we may, are oft- 
enest simply such beliefs as we have never heard ques- 
tioned." " In this great society wide lying around us," 
says Emerson, " a critical analysis would find very few 
spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross 
sense." We play our parts so faithfully, not to say con- 
scientiously, that often we have difficulty in placing our- 
selves, whether with the assumed or the natural. The 



DISGUISES. 65 

little arts and artifices we thrive by, become essentially a 
part of us ; and in the jostle and conflict — the greater to 
devour the lesser and the lesser the least — we seem im- 
pelled to pursue the objects and ends which long habit 
has somehow convinced us nature particularly suited us 
to pursue. When an event occurs to attract attention to 
our follies or baseness, it has not the effect to prompt re- 
pentance, but to excite our cunning, and set us to work 
to find excuses, or to imagine some other course of con- 
duct which would have been more foolish or mischievous. 
" We keep on deceiving ourselves in regard to our faults, 
until we, at last, come to look upon them as virtues." 
Like Selwyn, the accomplished courtier and wit in the 
time of George III., we get to think even our vices neces- 
sities. After a night of elegant rioting and debauch, he 
tumbled out of his bed at noon the next day, and reeling 
with both hands upon his head to a mirror in his apart- 
ment, gazed at himself and soliloquized : " I look and feel 
most villainously mean ; but it 's life — hang it, it 's life ! " 
Lord Bacon, discoursing upon the " politic knowledge 
of ourselves," and the "wisdom of business," in the 
Second Book of the Proficience and Advancement of 
Learning, says : " The covering of defects is of no less 
importance than the valuing of good parts ; which may 
be done in three manners, by caution, by color, and by 
confidence. Caution is when men do ingeniously and 
discreetly avoid to be put into those things for which they 
are not proper : whereas, contrariwise, bold and unquiet 
spirits will thrust themselves into matters without differ- 
ence, and so publish and proclaim all their wants. Color is, 
when men make a way for themselves, to have a construc- 
tion made of their faults and wants, as proceeding from 
a better cause, or intended for some other purpose : for 
of the one it is well said, ' Vice often lurks in the like- 
ness of virtue,' and therefore whatsoever want a man 
hath, he must see that he pretend the virtue that shadow- 
5 



66 LIBRARY NOTES. 

eth it ; as if he be dull, he must affect gravity ; if a cow- 
ard, mildness ; and so the rest : for the second, a man 
must frame some probable cause why he should not do 
his best, and why he should dissemble his abilities ; and 
for that purpose must use to dissemble those abilities 
which are notorious in him, to give color that his true 
wants are but industries and dissimulations. For confi- 
dence, it is the last but surest remedy; namely, to de- 
press and seem to despise whatsoever a man cannot at- 
tain ; observing the good principle of the merchants, 
who endeavor to raise the price of their own commodities, 
and to beat down the price of others. But there is a con- 
fidence that passeth this other ; which is to face out a 
man's own defects, in seeming to conceive that he is best 
in those things wherein he is failing ; and, to help that 
again, to seem on the other side that he hath least opin- 
ion of himself in those things wherein he is best ; like as 
we shall see it commonly in poets ; that if they show their 
verses, and you except to any, they will say, that that line 
cost them more labor than any of the rest ; and presently 
will seem to disable and suspect rather some other line, 
which they know well enough to be the best in the num- 
ber." 

" Few persons who talk of any virtue or quality," says 
Pascal, " are inwardly acquainted or affected with it. 
We are all full of duplicity, deceit, and contradiction. 
We love to wear a disguise, even within, and are afraid 
of being detected by ourselves." 

Infirmities and calamities have been made to serve im- 
portant uses in the designs of men. " It was necessary," 
says a writer upon Mahomet, " that the religion he pro- 
posed to establish should have a divine sanction ; and 
for this purpose he turned a calamity with which he was 
afflicted to his advantage. He was often subject to fits 
of epilepsy, a disease which those whom it afflicts are de- 
sirous to conceal. Mahomet gave out, therefore, that 



DISGUISES. 6? 

these fits were trances, into which he was miraculously 
thrown by God Almighty, during which he was instructed 
in his will, which he was commanded to publish to the 
world. By this strange story, and by leading a retired, 
abstemious, and austere life, he easily acquired a charac- 
ter for superior sanctity among his acquaintances and 
neighbors. When he thought himself sufficiently forti- 
fied by the numbers and enthusiasm of his followers, he 
boldly declared himself a prophet, sent by God into the 
world, not only to teach his will, but to compel mankind 
to obey it." 

The world not only seems to be easily deceived, but 
seems to delight in deception. " If you wish to be pow- 
erful," said Home Tooke, " pretend to be powerful." If 
you wish to be considered wise, systematically pretend to 
be, and you will generally be acknowledged to be. We 
all know, for instance, the influence of manner, as some- 
times displayed by persons of great assumed personal 
dignity. Every neighborhood is afflicted with such pre- 
tenders. "Among those terms," says Whipple, indig- 
nantly, " which have long ceased to have any vital mean- 
ing, the word dignity deserves a disgraceful prominence. 
No word has fallen so readily into the designs of cant, 
imposture, and pretense ; none has played so well the 
part of verbal scarecrow, to frighten children of all ages 
and both sexes. It is at once the thinnest and most 
effective of all the coverings under which duncedom 
sneaks and skulks. Most of the men of dignity, who 
awe or bore their more genial brethren, are simply men 
who possess the art of passing off their insensibility for 
wisdom, their dullness for depth, and of concealing im- 
becility of intellect under haughtiness of manner. Their 
success in this small game is one of the stereotyped sa- 
tires upon mankind. Once strip from these pretenders 
their stolen garments — once disconnect their show of 
dignity from their real meanness — and they would stand 



68 LIBRARY NOTES. 

shivering and defenseless, — objects of the tears of pity, 
or targets for the arrows of scorn Manner tri- 
umphs over matter ; and throughout society, politics, let- 
ters, and science, we are doomed to meet a swarm of 
dunces and wind-bags, disguised as gentlemen, states- 
men, and scholars." When they open their mouths, it is 
to expand themselves with a new inhalation of emptiness, 
or to depreciate or belittle what they pretend is insignifi- 
cant, when it only exceeds their capacity. They put up 
their heads and expectorate with a smirky haughtiness, 
as if everything worth knowing were known to them, 
when a single sensation of modesty would envelop their 
moony faces with blushes. Every one has seen such a 
character, — " an embodied tediousness, which society is 
apt not only to tolerate, but to worship \ a person who 
announces the stale commonplaces of conversation with 
the awful precision of one bringing down to the valleys 
of thought bright truths plucked on its summits ; who is 
so profoundly deep and painfully solid, on the weather, 
or some nothing of the day ; who is inexpressibly shocked 
if your eternal gratitude does not repay him for the trite 
information he consumed your hour in imparting ; and 
who, if you insinuate that this calm, contented, impertur- 
bable stupidity is preying upon your patience, instantly 
stands upon his dignity, and puts on a face." " A cer- 
tain nobleman, some years ago," says Bulwer, in one of 
his essays, " was conspicuous for his success in the world. 
He had been employed in the highest situations, at home 
and abroad, without one discoverable reason for his se- 
lection, and without justifying the selection by one proof 
of administrative ability. Yet at each appointment the 
public said, ' A great gain to the government ! Superior 
man ! ' And when from each office he passed away, or 
rather passed imperceptibly onward toward offices still 
more exalted, the public said, ' A great loss to the gov- 
ernment ! Superior man! ' He was the most silent per- 



DISGUISES. 69 

son I ever met. But when the first reasoners of the age 
would argue some knotty point in his presence, he would, 
from time to time, slightly elevate his eyebrows, gently 
shake his head, or, by a dexterous smile of significant 
complacency, impress on you the notion how easily he 
could set those babblers right if he would but condescend 
to give voice to the wisdom within him. I was very young 
when I first met this superior man ; and chancing on the 
next day to call on the late Lord Durham, I said, in the 
presumption of early years, ' I passed six mortal hours 

last evening in company with Lord . I don't think 

there is much in him.' ' Good heavens ! ' cried Lord 
Durham, ' how did you find that out ? Is it possible that 
he could have — talked ? ' " Coleridge speaks of a dig- 
nified man he once saw at a dinner-table. " He listened 
to me," says the poet, " and said nothing for a long time ; 
but he nodded his head, and I thought him intelligent. 
At length, toward the end of the dinner, some apple 
dumplings were placed on the table, and my man had no 
sooner seen them, than he burst forth with, — ' Them's 
the jockies for me ! ' I wish Spurzheim could have ex- 
amined the fellow's head." The Duke of Somerset is 
described as one of these dignified gentlemen. His 
second wife was one of the most beautiful women in 
England. She once suddenly threw her arms around his 
neck, and gave him a kiss which might have gladdened 
the heart of an emperor. The duke, lifting his shoulders 
with an aristocratic square, slowly said, " Madam, my first 
wife was a Howard, and she never would have taken such 
a liberty ! " If it were practicable to expose the artifice 
and emptiness of such characters, the exhibition would 
be as amusing as the scene once presented on the stage 
of a theatre. The comedian was enveloped in a great 
India-rubber suit, expanded by air to give it the proper 
proportions to represent Falstaff : when just in the middle 
of one of the inimitable speeches of that inimitable char- 



70 LIBRARY NOTES. 

acter, some wag of the stock insinuated a sharp-pointed 
instrument into the immense windful garment : immedi- 
ately the great proportions of Falstaff began to diminish, 
attended by an audible hissing noise ; and before the 
discomposed actor, overwhelmed with the laughter of the 
uproarious audience, could retire from the stage, he had 
shrunk to an insignificant one hundred and fifty pounds 
avoirdupois, with his deceptive covering hanging about 
his gaunt limbs in voluminous folds ! Such persons will 
generally be found in possession of good moral habits — 
props they instinctively set up to sustain their pretenses. 
They know by intuition that an affectation of wisdom 
and greatness would be intolerable if attended by vicious 
propensities and practices ; so they cultivate with sys- 
tematic carefulness all the forms of morality and virtue. 
They know that their good habits will always insure the 
respect of even those who detect and despise their emp- 
tiness. But they are never heard to claim anything on 
the score of superior virtue ; they demand to be known 
as Solons — as abridgments of all that is profound and 
wonderful known among men. Like the owl — that wise 
bird, sacred of old to Minerva — they make their preten- 
sions respected by the most commendable propriety. 

" Yorick had an invincible dislike and opposition in his 
nature to gravity ; — not to gravity as such ; — for where 
gravity was wanted, he would be the most grave or serious 
of mortal men for days and weeks together ; but he was 
an enemy to the affectation of it, and declared open war 
against it, only as it appeared a cloak for ignorance, or 
folly : and then, whenever it fell in his way, however 
sheltered and protected, he seldom gave it any quarter. 
Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he would say, that 
gravity was an errant scoundrel, and, he would add, — 
of the most dangerous kind too, — because a sly one ; 
and that he verily believed, more honest, well-meaning 
people were bubbled out of their goods and money by it 



DISGUISES. 



71 



in one twelvemonth, than by pocket-picking, and shop- 
lifting in seven. In the naked temper which a merry 
heart discovered, he would say there was no danger, — 
but to itself : — whereas the very essence of gravity was 
design, and consequently deceit ; — 't was a taught trick, 
to gain credit of the world for more sense and knowledge 
than a man was worth ; and that, with all his pretensions, 
— it was no better, but often worse, than what a French 
wit had long ago defined it, viz. : A mysterious carriage of 
the body, to cover the defects of the mind : — which def- 
inition of gravity, Yorick, with great imprudence, would 
say, deserved to be wrote in letters of gold." 

" Men in general," says Machiavelli, in his Prince, 
"judge more from appearances than from reality. All 
men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration. 
Every one sees your exterior, but few can discern what 
you have in your heart ; and those few dare not oppose 
the voice of the multitude." 

A pretension to devoutness and asceticism was one of 
the fashions in Moliere's time. In his play of Le Festin 
de Pierre, he makes Don Juan to say : " The profession 
of hypocrite has marvelous advantages. It is an act of 
which the imposture is always respected ; and though it 
may be discovered, no one dares do anything against it. 
All the other vices of man are liable to censure, and every 
one has the liberty of boldly attacking them ; but hypoc- 
risy is a privileged vice, which with its hand closes every- 
body's mouth, and enjoys its repose with sovereign im- 
punity." 

The absorbing desire for wealth — " that bad thing, 
gold," that " buys all things good " — like ambition, 
" often puts men upon doing the meanest offices : so 
climbing is performed in the same posture with creep- 
ing." Almost every act may be a lie against the thought 
or motive which prompted it. The great aim of the mere 
money-getter — to get and get forever — involves him in 



J2 LIBRARY NOTES. 

false pretense and practical falsehood. s He advises to in- 
veigle ; he condoles and sympathizes to ruin. He talks 
of liberalty, and never gives. He depreciates money and 
the love of it, at the same time glows and dimples with 
the consciousness of his possessions. He calls life a 
humbug or muck, and proves it by a hypocritical exhibit 
of his gains. He puts a penny in the urn of poverty, and 
sees clearly how he will get a shilling out. He whines 
for wretchedness, forgetting the number he has made 
wretched. He gives to religion, and plunders her devo- 
tees. He hires an expensive pew near the pulpit, and 
cheats his woodsawyer and washerwoman. He builds 
costly churches with tall steeples, and, writing the Al- 
mighty in his list of debtors, formally bargains admission 
to heaven. " He falls down and worships the god of this 
world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities, nor its 
pleasures, for his trouble. He begins to accumulate treas- 
ure as a mean to happiness, and by a common but morbid 
association he continues to accumulate it as an end. He 
lives poor to die rich, and is the mere jailer of his house, 
and the turnkey of his wealth. Impoverished by his gold, 
he slaves harder to imprison it in his chest than his 
brother-slave to liberate it from the mine." " Some 
men," says Chrysippus, in Athensus, " apply themselves 
with such eagerness to the pursuit of money, that it is 
even related, that a man once, when near his end, swal- 
lowed a number of pieces of gold, and so died. Another 
person sewed a quantity of money into a tunic, and put it 
on, and then ordered his servants to bury him in that 
dress, neither burning his body, nor stripping it and lay- 
ing it out." Foote, in endeavoring to express the micro- 
scopic niggardliness of a miser of his acquaintance, ex- 
pressed a belief that he would be willing to take the 
beam out of his own eye if he knew he could sell the tim- 
ber. Doubtless, one source of the miser's insane covet- 
ousness and parsimony is the tormenting fear of dying a 



DISGUISES. 73 

beggar — that "fine horror of poverty," according to 
Lamb, " by which he is not content to keep want from 
the door, or at arm's-length, but he places it, by heaping 
wealth upon wealth, at a sublime distance." ( " All the 
arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no 
evil," impatiently exclaimed Dr. Johnson, " show it to be 
evidently a great evil. You never find people laboring to 
convince you that you may live very happily upon a plen- 
tiful fortune. So you hear people talking how miserable 
a king must be ; and yet they all wish to be in his place." 
" One asks," says La Bruyere, " if, in comparing the dif- 
ferent conditions of men together, their sufferings and 
advantages, we cannot observe an equal mixture, and a 
like assortment of good and evil, which settles them on an 
equality, or at least makes one as desirable as the other : 
the rich and powerful man, who wants nothing, may put 
the question, but a poor man must answer it.") The 
hoarding habits of the miser remind one of a device of 
American boatmen, at an early day, before the steamboat 
was invented, and when the forest was infested with sav- 
ages and robbers. Receiving specie at New Orleans for 
their produce, they deposited it in a wet buckskin belt, of 
sufficient length to surround the body, which, as it dried, 
contracted and shrunk round the coin, till no amount of 
shaking would cause it to jingle. So may the heart and 
soul of the avaricious man shrink round his little heap of 
gold, until all healthy circulation ceases, and his heart 
never jingles with a genuine, generous, manly impulse. 

Disraeli, in his Curiosities, gives an interesting philo- 
sophical sketch of Audley, — the great Audley, as he was 
called in his time, — who concentrated all the powers of 
a vigorous intellect in the accumulation of wealth. He 
lived in England in the beginning of the seventeenth cent- 
ury, through the reigns of James I. and Charles I., and, 
beginning life with almost nothing, died worth four hun- 
dred thousand pounds sterling. He " lived to view his 



74 LIBRARY NOTES. 

mortgages, his statutes, and his judgments so numerous, 
that it was observed, his papers would have made a good 
map of England. This philosophical usurer never pressed 
hard for his debts ; like the fowler, he never shook his 
nets lest he might startle, satisfied to have them, without 
appearing to hold them. With great fondness he com- 
pared his ' bonds to infants, which battle best by sleep- 
ing.' To battle is to be nourished, a term still retained 
at the University of Oxford. His familiar companions 
were all subordinate actors in the great piece he was per- 
forming ; he too had his part in the scene. When not 
taken by surprise, on his table usually laid open a great 
Bible, with Bishop Andrews' folio Sermons, which often 
gave him an opportunity of railing at the covetousness of 
the clergy ! declaring their religion was a ' mere preach,' 
and that ' the time would never be well till we had Queen 
Elizabeth's Protestants again in fashion.' He was aware 
of all the evils arising out of a population beyond the 
means of subsistence, and dreaded an inundation of man, 
spreading like the spawn of a cod. Hence he considered 
marriage, with a modern political economist, as very dan- 
gerous ] bitterly censuring the clergy, whose children, he 
said, never thrived, and whose widows were left desti- 
tute. An apostolic life, according to Audley, required 
only books, meat, and drink, to be had for fifty pounds a 
year ! Celibacy, voluntary poverty, and all the mortifica- 
tions of a primitive Christian, were the virtues practiced 
by this Puritan among his moneybags. Audley's was 
that worldly wisdom which derives all its strength from 
the weaknesses of mankind. Everything was to be ob- 
tained by stratagem, and it was his maxim, that to grasp 
our object the faster, we must go a little round about it. 
His life is said to have been one of intricacies and myste- 
ries, using indirect means in all things ; but if he walked 
in a labyrinth, it was to bewilder others ; for the clew was 
still in his own hand ; all he sought was that his designs 



DISGUISES. 75 

should not be discovered in his actions. His word, we 
are told, was his bond ; his hour was punctual ; and his 
opinions were compressed and weighty ; but if he was true 
to his bond-word, it was only a part of the system to give 
facility to the carrying on of his trade, for he was not 
strict to his honor ; the pride of victory, as well as the 
passion for acquisition, combined in the character of 
Audley, as in more tremendous conquerors. In the 
course of time he purchased a position in the ' court of 
wards,' which enabled him to plunder the estates of de- 
ceased persons and minors. When asked the value of 
this new office, he replied that ' it might be worth some 
thousands of pounds to him who after his death would go 
instantly to heaven ; twice as much to him who would go 
to purgatory, and nobody knows what to him who would 
adventure to go to hell.' " What he thought of a venture 
to the latter place, his four hundred thousand pounds 
must speak. 

Many and interesting as are the disguises of avarice, 
it is only in rank and ancestry that you find perfect com- 
placency and assurance. " We have all heard," says 
Thackeray, " of the dying French duchess who viewed her 
coming dissolution and subsequent fate so easily, because 
she said she was sure that Heaven must deal politely with 
a person of her quality." You recollect that other duch- 
ess, in Saint-Simon, who, on the death of a sinner of 
illustrious race, said, " They may say what they like, but 
no one shall persuade me that God does not think of it 
twice before he damns a man of his birth." An old lady 
once said to De Tocqueville, " I have been reading with 
great satisfaction the genealogies which prove that Jesus 
Christ descended from David. It shows that our Lord 
was a gentleman." " We are somewhat ashamed in gen- 
eral," said Senior to De Tocqueville, " of Jewish blood ; 
yet the Levis boast of their descent from the Hebrew 
Levi." " They are proud of it," answered De Tocqueville ; 



y6 LIBRARY NOTES. 

" because they make themselves out to be cousins of the 
blessed Virgin. They have a picture in which a Duke de 
Levi stands bareheaded before the Virgin. 'Pray put 
your hat on, cousin,' she says. ' I had rather keep it off,' 
he answered." 

" Do we not every day meet with people," says Xavier 
de Maistre, " who fancy they are ill because they are un- 
shaven, or because some one has thought they have looked 
poorly, and told them so ? Dress has such influence 
upon men's minds that there are valetudinarians who think 
themselves in better health than usual when they have on 
a new coat and well powdered wig. They deceive the 
public and themselves by their nicety about dress, until 
one finds some fine morning they have died in full fig, 
and their death startles everybody." 

Lord Eldon was fond of relating amusing anecdotes of 
the famous state trials of Hardy, Home Tooke, and Thel- 
well, which occurred while he was attorney general. 
" Every evening," he said, " upon my leaving the court, 
a signal was given that I was coming out, for a general 
hissing and hooting of the attorney general. This went 
through the street in which the court sat, from one end of 
it to the other, and was continued all the way down to 
Ludgate Hill and by Fleet Market. One evening, at the 
rising of the court, I was preparing to retire, when Mr. 
Garrow said, ' Do not, Mr. Attorney, pass that tall man 
at the end of the table.' ' And why not ? ' said Mr. Law, 
who stood next. ' He has been here,' answered Mr. 
Garrow, ' during the whole trial, with his eyes constantly 
fixed on the attorney general.' * I will pass him,' said 
Mr. Law. 'And so will I,' was my rejoinder. As we 
passed, the man drew back. When I entered my car- 
riage, the mob rushed forward, crying, 'That's he, drag 
him out ! ' Mr. Erskine, from whose carriage the mob 
had taken off the horses to draw him home in triumph, 
stopped the people, saying, ' I will not go without the 



DISGUISES. 77 

attorney general ! ' I instantly addressed them : ' So you 
imagine, that if you kill me, you will be without an attor- 
ney general ! Before ten o'clock to-morrow there will be 
a new attorney general, by no means so favorably dis- 
posed to you as I am.' I heard a friend in the crowd ex- 
claim, ' Let him alone ! let him alone ! • They separated, 
and I proceeded. When I reached my home in Gower 
Street, I saw, close to my door, the tall man who stood 
near me in court. I had no alternative ; I instantly went 
up to him : ' What do you want ? ' I said. ' Do not be 
alarmed,' he answered ; * I have attended in court during 
the whole of the trial — I know my own strength, and am 
resolved to stand by you. You once did an act of great 
kindness to my father. Thank God, you are safe at home. 
May He bless and protect you ! ' He instantly disap- 
peared." 

Rulhiere told De Tocqueville a very different story, 
characteristic of a Russian. He was a man of high rank, 
who had been sent to the French head-quarters on a mis- 
sion, and lived for some time on intimate terms with the 
staff, particularly with Rulhiere. At the battle of Eylau 
Rulhiere was taken prisoner. He caught the eye of his 
Russian friend, who came to offer his services. " You 
can do me," said Rulhiere, " an important service. One 
of your Cossacks yonder has just seized my horse and 
cloak. I am dying of fatigue and cold. If you can get 
them for me, you may save my life." The Russian went 
to the Cossack, talked to him rather sharply, probably on 
the wickedness of robbing a prisoner ; got possession of 
the horse and cloak ; put on the one, and mounted the 
other, and Rulhiere never saw him again. 

Incledon, the singer, related to Crabb Robinson, in a 
stage-coach, anecdotes of Garrick and Foote, which show 
how completely they both lost themselves in their acting. 
Garrick had a brother living in the country, who was an 
idolatrous admirer of his genius. A rich neighbor, a 



78 LIBRARY NOTES. 

grocer, being about to visit London, this brother insisted 
on his taking a letter of introduction to the actor. Not 
being able to make up his mind to visit the great man the 
first day, the grocer went to the play in the evening, and 
saw Garrick in Abel Drugger. On his return to the coun- 
try, the brother eagerly inquired respecting the visit he 
had been so anxious to bring about. "Why, Mr. Garrick," 
said the good man, "I am sorry to hurt your feelings, 
but there 's your letter. I did not choose to deliver it." 
"Not deliver it !" exclaimed the other, in astonishment. 
" I happened to see him when he did not know me, and I 
saw that he was such a dirty, low-lived fellow, that I did 
not like to have anything to do with him." Foote went 
to Ireland, and took off a celebrated Dublin printer. The 
printer stood the jest for some time, but found at last 
that Foote's imitations became so popular, and drew such 
attention to himself, that he could not walk the streets 
without being pointed at. He bethought himself of a 
remedy. Collecting a number of boys, he gave them a 
hearty meal, and a shilling each for a place in the gallery, 
and promised them another meal on the morrow if they 
w r ould hiss off the scoundrel who turned him into ridicule. 
The injured man learned from his friends that Foote was 
received that night better than ever. Nevertheless, in 
the morning, the ragged troop of boys appeared to de- 
mand their recompense, and when the printer reproached 
them for their treachery, their spokesman said : " Plase 
yer honor, we did all we could, for the actor-man had 
heard of us, and did not come at all at all. And so we 
had nobody to hiss. But when we saw yer honor's own 
dear self come on, we did clap, indeed we did, and 
showed you all the respect and honor in our power. And 
so yer honor won't forget us because yer honor's enemy 
was afraid to come, and left yer honor to yer own dear 
self." 

Immortal sermons are disguised in legends ; the most 



DISGUISES. 79 

familiar objects are perpetually preaching to us. Ages 
ago, the Germans have it, there went, one Sunday morn- 
ing, an old man into the forest to cut wood. When he 
had made a bundle, he slung it on his staff, cast it over 
his shoulder, and started for home. On his way he met 
a minister, all in his bands and robes, who asked him, 
" Don't you know, my friend, that it is Sunday on earth, 
when all must rest from their labors ? " " Sunday on 
earth, Monday in heaven, it is all one to me," laughed 
the woodman. " Then bear your burden forever," said 
the priest ■ " and as you value not Sunday on earth, you 
shall have Monday in heaven till the great day." There- 
upon the speaker vanished, and the man was caught up, 
with cane and fagots, into the moon, where you can see 
him any clear night. The Norwegians think they see 
both a man and woman ; and the legend is, that the 
former threw branches at people going to church, and the 
latter made butter on Sunday. In the clear, cold nights 
of winter they will point out the man carrying his bundle 
of thorns, and the woman her butter-tub. In Norway, the 
red-crested, black woodpecker is known under the name 
of Gertrud's bird. Its origin, according to Thorpe, is as 
follows : When our Lord, accompanied by St. Peter, was 
wandering on earth, they came to a woman who was occu- 
pied in baking : her name was Gertrud, and on her head 
she wore a red hood. Weary and hungry from their long 
journeying, our Lord begged for a cake. She took a lit- 
tle dough and set it on to bake, and it grew so large that 
it filled the whole pan. Thinking it too much for alms, 
she took a smaller quantity of dough, and again began to 
bake, but this cake also swelled up to the same size as 
the first; she then took still less dough, and when the 
cake had become as large as the preceding ones, Gertrud 
said : " You must go without alms ; for all my bakings are 
too large for you." Then was our Lord wroth, and said, 
" Because thou gavest me nothing, thou shalt for punish- 



80 LIBRARY NOTES. 

ment become a little bird, shalt seek thy dry food between 
the wood and the bark, and drink only when it rains." 
Hardly were these words spoken when the woman w r as 
transformed to the Gertrud bird, and flew away through 
the kitchen chimney; and at this day she is seen with a 
red hood and black body, because she was blackened by 
the soot of the chimney. She constantly pecks the bark 
of trees for sustenance, and whistles against rain ; for she 
always thirsts and hopes to drink. According to the 
legend, the Wandering Jew is a poor shoemaker of Jeru- 
salem. When Christ, bearing his cross, passed before 
his house, and asked his leave to repose for a moment on 
the stone bench at his door, the Jew replied harshly, " Go 
on — go on!" and refused him. "It is thou who shalt 
go on till the end of time ! " was Christ's reply, in a sad 
but severe tone. 

Lord Cockburn, in his Memorials, relates an anecdote 
of Dr. Henry, the historian, as told to him by Sir Harry 
Moncreiff, who was the doctor's favorite younger friend. 
The doctor was living at a place of his own in his native 
county of Stirling. He was about seventy-two, and had 
been for some time very feeble. He wrote to Sir Harry 
that he was dying, and thus invited him for the last time 
— " Come out here directly. I have got something to 
do this week, I have got to die." Sir Harry went ; and 
found his friend plainly sinking, but resigned and cheer- 
ful. He had no children, and there was nobody with 
him except his wife. She and Sir Harry remained alone 
with him for about three days, being his last three ; dur- 
ing a great part of which the reverend historian sat in his 
easy chair, and conversed, and listened to reading, and 
dozed. While engaged in this way, the hoofs of a horse 
were heard clattering in the court below. Mrs. Henry 
looked out and exclaimed that it was "that wearisome 
body," naming a neighboring minister, who was famous 
for never leaving a house after he had once got into it. 



I 



DISGUISES. 8l 

" Keep him out," cried the doctor, " don't let the crater 
in here." But before they could secure his exclusion, the 
crater's steps were heard on the stair, and he was at the 
door. The doctor instantly winked significantly, and 
signed to them to sit down and be quiet, and he would 
pretend to be sleeping. The hint was taken ; and when 
the intruder entered he found the patient asleep in his 
cushioned chair. Sir Harry and Mrs. Henry put their 
fingers to their lips, and pointing to the supposed slum- 
berer as one not to be disturbed, shook their heads. The 
man sat down near the door, like one inclined to wait till 
the nap was over. Once or twice he tried to speak ; but 
was instantly repressed by another finger on the lip, and 
another shake of the head. So he sat on, all in perfect 
silence for about a quarter of an hour ; during which Sir 
Harry occasionally detected the dying man peeping cau- 
tiously through the fringes of his eyelids, to see how his 
visitor was coming on. At last Sir Harry tired, and he 
and Mrs. Henry, pointing to the poor doctor, fairly 
waved the visitor out of the room ; on which the doctor 
opened his eyes wide, and had a tolerably hearty laugh ; 
which was renewed when the sound of the horse's feet 
made them certain that their friend was actually off the 
premises. Dr. Henry died that night. 

Douglas Jerrold speaks of a London tradesman of great 
practical benevolence. It was the happiness of his tem- 
perament to recommend to the palates of babes and suck- 
lings the homeliest, nay, the most disagreeable shapes, by 
the lusciousness of their material. The man made sem- 
blances of all things in sugar. 

Did you ever read that remarkable paper of Lamb's, 
the Reminiscences of Juke Judkins, Esq., of Birming- 
ham ? It is a nice, microscopic, philosophic study and 
analysis of meanness, — as common, we dare say, in this 
world, as avarice, — and will make us wonder that or- 
dinary gifts and traits can be so perverted and belittled 
6 



82 LIBRARY NOTES. 

by debasing uses. All that is good of humanity was 
once united with Divinity, and made the best character 
that ever existed on earth. Humiliating it would be, if 
not impious, to imagine how much worse might be the 
devil if he would adopt the bestial qualities and worse 
than Satanic traits that men are constantly exposing and 
cultivating in their relations with one another. " I was 
always," says Juke, "my father's favorite. He took a 
delight, to the very last, in recounting the little sagacious 
tricks and innocent artifices of my childhood. One man- 
ifestation thereof I never heard him repeat without tears 
of joy trickling down his cheeks. It seems that when I 
quitted the parental roof (August 27, 1788), being then 
six years and not quite a month old, to proceed to the 
Free School at Warwick, where my father was a sort of 
trustee, my mother — as mothers are usually provident 
on these occasions — had stuffed the pocket of the coach, 
which was to convey me and six more children of my own 
growth that were going to be entered along with me at 
the same seminary, with a prodigious quantity of ginger- 
bread, which I remember my father said was more than 
was needed ; and so indeed it was ; for, if I had been to 
eat it all myself, it would have got stale and mouldy be- 
fore it had been half spent. The consideration whereof 
set me upon my contrivances how I might secure to my- 
self as much of the gingerbread as would keep good for 
the next two or three days, and yet none of the rest in 
manner be wasted. I had a little pair of pocket com- 
passes, which I usually carried about me for the purpose 
of making draughts and measurements, at which I was 
always very ingenious, of the various engines and me- 
chanical inventions in which such a town as Birmingham 
abounded. By the means of these, and a small penknife 
which my father had given me, I cut out the one half of 
the cake, calculating that the remainder would reasonably 
serve my turn ; and subdividing it into many little slices, 



DISGUISES. 83 

which were curious to see for the neatness and niceness 
of their proportion, I sold it out in so many pennyworths 
to my young companions as served us all the way to War- 
wick, which is a distance of some twenty miles from this 
town ; and very merry, I assure you, we made ourselves 
with it, feasting all the way. By this honest stratagem, 
I put double the prime cost of the gingerbread into my 
purse, and secured as much as I thought would keep 
good and moist for my next two or three days' eating. 
When I told this to my parents on their first visit to me 
at Warwick, my father (good man) patted me on the 
cheek, and stroked my head, and seemed as if he could 
never make enough of me ; but my mother unaccounta- 
bly burst into tears, and said ' it was a very niggardly 
action,' or some such expression, and that 'she would 
rather it would please God to take me ' — meaning, God 
help me, that I should die — ' than that she should live 
to see me grow up a mean man ; ' which shows the differ- 
ence of parent from parent, and how some mothers are 
more harsh and intolerant to their children than some 
fathers ; when we might expect the contrary. My father, 
however, loaded me with presents from that time, which 
made me the envy of my school-fellows. As I felt this 
growing disposition in them, I naturally sought to avert 
it by all the means in my power ; and from that time I 
used to eat my little packages of fruit, and other nice 
things, in a corner, so privately that I was never found 
out. Once, I remember, I had a huge apple sent me, of 
that sort which they call cats'-heads. I concealed this all 
day under my pillow ; and at night, but not before I had 
ascertained that my bed-fellow was sound asleep, — which 
I did by pinching him rather smartly two or three times, 
which he seemed to perceive no more than a dead per- 
son, though once or twice he made a motion as he would 
turn, which frightened me, — I say, when I had made all 
sure, I fell to work upon my apple ; and, though it was as 



84 LIBRARY NOTES. 

big as an ordinary man's two fists, I made shift to get 
through before it was time to get up. And a more de- 
licious feast I never made; thinking all night what a 
good parent I had (I mean my father), to send me so 
many nice things, when the poor lad that lay by me had 
no parent or friend in the world to send him anything 
nice ; and, thinking of his desolate condition, I munched 
and munched as silently as I could, that I might not set 
him a-longing if he overheard me. And yet, for all this 
considerateness and attention to other people's feelings, 
I was never much a favorite with my school-fellows ; 
which I have often wondered at, seeing that I never de- 
frauded any one of them of the value of a half-penny, or 
told stories of them to their master, as some little lying 
boys would do, but was ready to do any of them all the 
services in my power that were consistent with my own 
well-doing. I think nobody can be expected to go further 
than that." Juke, in the course of time, was engaged to 
be married to a maiden named Cleora. Hear him relate 
the circumstance that broke off the engagement : " I was 
never," he says, " much given to theatrical entertain- 
ments ; that is, at no turn of my life was I ever what 
they call a regular play-goer ; but on some occasion of 
a benefit-night, which was expected to be very productive, 
and indeed turned out so, Cleora expressing a desire to 
be present, I could do no less than offer, as I did very 
willingly, to squire her and her mother to the pit. At 
that time, it was not customary in our town for trades- 
folk, except some of the very topping ones, to sit, as they 
now do, in the boxes. At the time appointed, I waited 
upon the ladies, who had brought with them a young man, 
a distant relation, whom it seems they had invited to be 
of the party. This a little disconcerted me, as I had 
about me barely silver enough to pay for our three selves 
at the door, and did not at first know that their relation 
had proposed paying for himself. However, to do the 



DISGUISES. 85 

young man justice, he not only paid for himself but for 
the old lady besides ; leaving me only to pay for two, as 
it were. In our passage to the theatre, the notice of 
Cleora was attracted to some orange wenches that stood 
about the doors vending their commodities. She was 
leaning on my arm ; and I could feel her every now and 
then giving me a nudge, as it is called, which I afterward 
discovered were hints that I should buy some oranges. 
It seems it is a custom at Birmingham, and perhaps in 
other places, when a gentleman treats ladies to the play, 
— especially when a full night is expected, and that the 
house will be inconveniently warm, — to provide them 
with this kind of fruit, oranges being esteemed for their 
cooling property. But how could I guess at that, never 
having treated ladies to a play before, and being, as I 
said, quite a novice in these kind of entertainments ? 
At last, she spoke plain out, and begged that I would 
buy some of ' those oranges,' pointing to a particular.bar- 
row. But, when I came to examine the fruit, I did not 
think the quality of it was answerable to the price. In 
this way, I handled several baskets of them ; but some- 
thing in them all displeased me. Some had thin rinds, 
and some were plainly over-ripe, which is as great a fault 
as not being ripe enough ; and I could not (what they 
call) make a bargain. While I stood haggling with the 
women secretly determining to put off my purchase till I 
should get within the theatre, where I expected we should 
have better choice, the young man, the cousin (who, it 
seems, had left us without my missing him), came running 
to us with his pockets stuffed out with oranges, inside and 
out, as they say. It seems, not liking the look of the 
barrow-fruit any more than myself, he had slipped away 
to an eminent fruiterer's, about three doors distant, which 
I never had the sense to think of, and had laid out a 
matter of two shillings in some of the best St. Michael's, 
I think, I ever tasted. What a little hinge, as I said be- 



2,6 LIBRARY NOTES. 

fore, the most important affairs in life may turn upon ! 
The mere inadvertence to the fact that there was an em- 
inent fruiterer's within three doors of us, though we had 
just passed it without the thought once occurring to me, 
which he had taken advantage of, lost me the affection 
of my Cleora. From that time she visibly cooled toward 
me, and her partiality was as visibly transferred to this 
cousin. I was long unable to account for this change in 
her behavior ; when one day, accidentally discoursing of 
oranges to my mother, alone, she let drop a sort of re- 
proach to me, as if I had offended Cleora by my near- 
ness, as she called it, that evening. Even now, when 
Cleora has been wedded some years to that same officious 
relation, as I may call him, I can hardly be persuaded 
that such a trifle could have been the motive to her in- 
constancy ; for could she suppose that I would sacrifice 
my dearest hopes in her to the paltry sum of two shillings, 
when I was going to treat her to the play, and her mother 
too (an expense of more than four times that amount), if 
the young man had not interfered to pay for the latter, as 
I mentioned ? But the caprices of the sex are past find- 
ing out ; and I begin to think my mother was in the 
right ; for doubtless women know women better than we 
can pretend to know them." 

Juke would have made a good tradesman under the 
rules laid down by De Foe : " A tradesman behind his 
counter must have no flesh and blood about him, no pas- 
sions, no resentment ; he must never be angry, no, not 
so much as seem to be so, if a customer tumbles him five 
hundred pounds' worth of goods, and scarce bids money 
for anything ; nay, though they really come to his shop 
with no intent to buy, as many do, only to see what is to 
be sold, and though he knows they cannot be better 
pleased than they are at some other shop where they in- 
tend to buy, 't is all one ; the tradesman must take it ; 
he must place it to the account of his calling, that 't is 



disguises. Sy 

his business to be ill-used and resent nothing. I could 
give you many examples, how and in what manner a 
shopkeeper is to behave himself in the way of business ; 
what impertinences, what taunts, flouts, and ridiculous 
things he must bear in his trade ; and must not show 
the least return, or the least signal of disgust ; he must 
have no passions, no fire in his temper ; he must be all 
soft and smooth ; nay, if his real temper be naturally 
fiery and hot, he must show none of it in his shop ; he 
must be a perfect, complete hypocrite, if he would be a 
complete tradesman. It is true, natural tempers are not 
to be always • counterfeited : the man cannot easily be a 
lamb in his shop and a lion in himself; but, let it be 
easy or hard, it must be done, and is done. There are 
men who have by custom and usage brought themselves 
to it, that nothing could be meeker and milder than they 
when behind the counter, and yet nothing be more furi- 
ous and raging in every other part of life ; nay, the prov- 
ocations they have met with in their shops have so irri- 
tated their rage, that they would go up-stairs from their 
shop, and fall into frenzies, and a kind of madness, and 
beat their heads against the wall, and perhaps mischief 
themselves, if not prevented, till the violence of it had 
gotten vent ; and the passions abate and cool. I heard 
once of a shopkeeper that behaved himself thus to such 
an extreme that, when he was provoked by the imperti- 
nence of the customers beyond what his temper could 
bear, he would go up-stairs and beat his wife, kick his 
children about like dogs, and be as furious for two or 
three minutes as a man chained down in Bedlam ; and 
again, when that heat was over, would sit down and cry 
faster than the children he had abused ; and, after the 
fit, he would go down into the shop again, and be as 
humble, as courteous, and as calm, as any man whatever ; 
so absolute a government of his passions had he in the 
shop, and so little out of it : in the shop, a soulless ani- 



88 LIBRARY NOTES. 

mal that would resent nothing ; and in the family, a mad- 
man : in the shop, meek like a lamb ; but in the family, 
outrageous, like a Libyan lion. The sum of the matter 
is, it is necessary for a tradesman to subject himself, by 
all the ways possible, to his business ; his customers are 
to be his idols : so far as he may worship idols by allow- 
ance, he is to bow down to them, and worship them ; at 
least, he is not in any way to displease them, or show 
any disgust or distaste, whatever they may say or do. 
The bottom of all is that he is intending to get money by 
them ; and it is not for him that gets money to offer the 
least inconvenience to them by whom he gets it : he is 
to consider that, as Solomon says, ■ the borrower is serv- 
ant to the lender ; ' so the seller is servant to the buyer." 

Poor George Dyer " commenced life, after a course of 
hard study, in the ' House of Pure Emanuel,' as usher to a 
knavish, fanatic school-master, at a salary of eight pounds 
per annum, with board and lodging. Of this poor stipend 
he never received above half in all the laborious years he 
served this man. He tells a pleasant anecdote, that when 
poverty, staring out at his ragged knees, sometimes com- 
pelled him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint 
at arrears, the school-master would take no immediate 
notice ; but after supper, when the school was called 
together to even-song, he would never fail to introduce 
some instructive homily against riches, and the corrup- 
tion of the heart occasioned through the desire of them, 
ending with, 'Lord, keep thy servants, above all things, 
from the heinous sin of avarice. Having food and rai- 
ment, let us therewithal be content. Give me Agur's 
wish,' — and the like, — which, to the little auditory, 
sounded like a doctrine full of Christian prudence and 
simplicity, but to poor Dyer was a receipt in full for that 
quarter's demands at least." 

Southey wrote to Cottle from Lisbon : " The English 
here unite the spirit of commerce with the frivolous 



DISGUISES. 89 

amusement of high life. One of them, who plays every 
night (Sundays are not excepted here), will tell you how 
closely he attends to profit. ' I never pay a porter for 
bringing a burden till the next day,' says he, ' for while 
the fellow feels his back ache with the weight, he charges 
high ; but when he comes the next day the feeling is 
gone, and he asks only half the money.' And the au- 
thor of this philosophical scheme is worth two hundred 
thousand dollars ! " 

" The late grand duke," said Goethe to Eckermann, 
"was very partial to Merck, so much so that he once 
became his security for a debt of four thousand dollars. 
Very soon Merck, to our surprise, gave him back his 
bond. As Merck's circumstances were not improved, we 
could not divine how he had been able to do this. When 
I saw him again, he explained the enigma thus : ' The 
duke,' said he, ' is an excellent, generous man, who trusts 
and helps men whenever he can. So I thought to myself, 
Now if you cozen him out of his money, that will preju- 
dice a thousand others \ for he will lose his precious trust- 
fulness, and many unfortunate but worthy men will suffer, 
because one was worthless. So I made a speculation, and 
borrowed the money from a scoundrel, whom it will be no 
matter if I do cheat ; but if I had not paid our good lord, 
the duke, it would have been a pity.' " 

" The greatest pleasure I know," said Lamb, " is to do 
a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by ac- 
cident." 



IV. 
STANDARDS. 

At a glance, it would appear that, as a rule, all men 
think all men imperfect but themselves. It follows, there- 
fore, that all would reform all but themselves. But if 
every man's standard of excellence could be accounted 
for, what a melancholy history of human frailties and 
follies might be had. What sad curiosities, perhaps, 
would be our pet virtues — offspring, alas, too often, of 
sated appetites, spent passions, hair-breadth escapes, and 
disappointed hopes. Knowing all, with what wondrous 
pity must God hear our poor prayers. To seek perfect 
virtue or contentment " is as hopeless as to try to recover 
a lost limb. Those only have it who never have thought 
about it. The moment we feel that we wish for it, we 
may be certain that it is gone forever." " To know how 
cherries and strawberries taste, you must ask the children 
and the birds." 

" All things," says Emerson, " work exactly according 
to their quality, and according to their quantity ; attempt 
nothing they cannot do, except man." He ventures " to 
say that what is bad is bad," and finds himself " at war 
with all the world." " Do not be so vain of your one ob- 
jection. Do you think there is only one ? Alas, my 
good friend, there is no part of society or of life better 
than any other part. All our things are right and wrong 
together. The wave of evil washes all alike." " Proba- 
bly there never was," says De Quincey, " one thought, 
from the foundation of the earth, that has passed through 
the mind of man, which did not offer some blemish, some 



STANDARDS. 



91 



sorrowful shadow of pollution, when it came up for re- 
view before a heavenly tribunal ; that is, supposing it a 
thought entangled at all with human interests or human 
passions." "All the progress which we have really made," 
says a writer in Blackwood, " and all the additional and 
fictitious progress which exists in our imagination, prompts 
us to the false idea that there is a remedy for everything, 
and that no pain is inevitable. But there' are pains which 
are inevitable in spite of philosophy, and conflicting claims 
to which Solomon himself could do no justice. We are 
not complete syllogisms, to be kept in balance by intel- 
lectual regulations, we human creatures. We are of all 
things and creatures in the world the most incomplete ; 
and there are conditions of our warfare, for the redress 
of which, in spite of all the expedients of social economy, 
every man and woman, thrown by whatever accident out 
of the course of nature, must be content to wait perhaps 
for years, perhaps for a life long, perhaps till the con- 
summation of all things." "All the speculations and 
schemes of the sanguine projectors of all ages," says John 
Foster, " have left the world still a prey to infinite legions 
of vices and miseries, an immortal band, which has tram- 
pled in scorn on the monuments and the dust of the self- 
idolizing men who dreamed, each in his day, that they 
were born to chase these evils out of the earth. If these 
vain demi-gods of an hour, who trusted to change the 
world, and who perhaps wished to change it only to make 
it a temple to their fame, could be awaked from the un- 
marked graves into which they sunk, to look a little while 
round on the world for some traces of the success of their 
projects, would they not be eager to retire again into the 
chambers of death, to hide the shame of their remembered 
presumption ? " " It is not given to reason," said Vau- 
venargues, "to cure all the vices of nature." "For a 
reasonable, voluntary being," says Sterling, "learning as 
he only can learn by experience, there will always be er- 



92 LIBRARY NOTES 

rors behind to mourn over, and a vista of unattainable 
good before, which inevitably lengthens as we advance," 
If we only could " grieve without affectation or imbecility, 
and journey on without turning aside or stopping." 

Leslie says, in his Recollections : " I remember seeing 
at Howard Payne's lodgings, at a breakfast which he gave 
to a large party, the then celebrated Robert Owen, who 
was at that time filling the papers with his scheme for re- 
modeling society on a plan that was to transcend Utopia. 
I remember Payne telling me that when Wilberforce, on 
being urged to bring this plan before Parliament, replied 
that it was too late in the season, Owen exclaimed, "What, 
sir ! put off the happiness of mankind till another session 
of Parliament ! " 

" I overheard Jove one day," said Silenus, " talking of 
destroying the earth ; he said it had failed ; they were 
all rogues and vixens, who went from bad to worse, as fast 
as the days succeeded each other. Minerva said she 
hoped not ; they were only ridiculous little creatures, with 
this odd circumstance, that they had a blur, or indeter- 
minate aspect, seen far or near ; if you called them bad, 
they would appear so ; and there was no one person or 
action among them which would not puzzle her owl, much 
more all Olympus, to know whether it was fundamentally 
bad or good." 

" It is the conviction of the purest men, that the net 
amount of man and man does not much vary. Each is 
incomparably superior to his companion in some faculty. 
Each seems to have some compensation yielded to him 
by his infirmity, and every hinderance operates as a con- 
centration of his force." " Everything we do has its re- 
sults. But the right and prudent does not always lead to 
good, or contrary measures to bad ; frequently the reverse 
takes place. Some time since," said Goethe, " I made a 
mistake in one of these transactions with booksellers, and 
was disturbed that I had done so. But, as circumstances 



STANDARDS. 93 

turned out, it would have been very unfortunate if I had 
not made that very mistake. Such instances occur fre- 
quently in life, and it is the observation of them which 
enables men of the world to go to work with such free- 
dom and boldness." 

" When we see a special reformer, we feel like asking 
him," says Emerson, "What right have you, sir, to your 
one virtue ? Is virtue piecemeal ? " " Your mode of hap- 
piness," said Coleridge, talking to such an one, " would 
make me miserable. To go about doing as much good 
as possible, to as many men as possible, is, indeed, an 
excellent object for a man to propose to himself; but 
then, in order that you may not sacrifice the real good 
and happiness of others to your particular views, which 
may be quite different from your neighbors', you must do 
that good to others which the reason, common to all, pro- 
nounces to be good for all." " What I object," said Syd- 
ney Smith, "to Scotch philosophers in general is, that 
they reason upon man as they would upon a divinity; 
they pursue truth without caring if it be useful truth." 
Michel Angelo's great picture of the Last Judgment, in 
the Sistine Chapel, narrowly escaped from destruction by 
the monastic views of Paul IV. In the commencement 
of his reign, we are told, he conceived a notion of reform- 
ing that picture, in which so many academical figures of- 
fended his sense of propriety. This was communicated 
to Michel Angelo, who desired that the pope might be 
told " that what he wished was very little, and might be 
easily effected ; for if his holiness would only reform the 
opinions of mankind, the picture would be reformed of 
itself." " You must have a genius for charity as well as 
for anything else. As for doing good," says Thoreau, 
" that is one of the professions which are full. What 
good I do, in the common sense of that word, must be 
aside from my main path, and for the most part wholly 
unintended. Men say, practically, Begin where you are 



94 LIBRARY NOTES. 

and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become 
of more worth, and with kindness aforethought go about 
doing good. If I were to preach at all in this strain, I 
should say, rather, Set about being good. As if the sun 
should stop when he had kindled his fires up to the 
splendor of a moon, or a star of the sixth magnitude, and 
go about like a Robin Goodfellow, peeping in at every 
cottage window, inspiring lunatics, and tainting meats, 
and making darkness visible, instead of steadily increas- 
ing his genial heat and beneficence till he is of such 
brightness that no mortal can look him in the face, and 
then, and in the meanwhile too, going about the world in 
his own orbit, doing it good, or rather, as a truer philos- 
ophy has discovered, the world going about him, getting 
good. When Phaeton, wishing to prove his heavenly 
birth by his beneficence, had the sun's chariot but one 
day, and drove out of the beaten track, he burned several 
blocks of houses in the lower streets of heaven, and 
scorched the surface of the earth, and dried up every 
spring, and made the great Desert of Sahara, till at length 
Jupiter hurled him headlong to the earth with a thunder- 
bolt, and the sun, through grief at his death, did not shine 
for a year." 

" There is no odor so bad," continues the same defiant 
radical, " as that which arises from goodness tainted. 
It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a cer- 
tainty that a man was coming to my house with the con- 
scious design of doing me good, I should run for my life, 
as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts 
called the simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and 
ears and eyes with dust till you are suffocated, for fear 
that I should get some of his good done to me, — some 
of its virus mingled with my blood. No ; in this case I 
would rather suffer evil the natural way." 

An officer of the government called one day at the 
White House, and introduced a clerical friend to Lincoln. 



STANDARDS. 95 

" Mr. President," said he, " allow me to present to you my 

friend, the Rev. Mr. F., of . Mr. F. has expressed 

a desire to see you and have some conversation with you, 
and I am happy to be the means of introducing him." 
The president shook hands with Mr. F., and, desiring 
him to be seated, took a seat himself. Then, his counte- 
nance having assumed an air of patient waiting, he said, 
" I am now ready to hear what you have to say." " Oh, 
bless you, sir," said Mr. F., " I have nothing special to 
say ; I merely called to pay my respects to you, and, as 
one of the million, to assure you of my hearty sympathy 
and support." " My dear sir," said the president, rising 
promptly, his face showing instant relief, and with both 
hands grasping that of his visitor, "I am very glad to 
see you, indeed. I thought you had come to preach to 
me!" 

" My father," said the Attic Philosopher, "feared every- 
thing that had the appearance of a lesson. He used to 
say that virtue could make herself devoted friends, but 
she did not take pupils ; therefore he was not anxious to 
teach goodness ; he contented himself with sowing the 
seeds of it, certain that experience would make them 
grow." " The disease of men," said Mencius, "is this: 
that they neglect their own fields, and go to weed the 
fields of others, and that what they require from others is 
great, while what they lay upon themselves is light." 

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of 
evil," says Thoreau, again, " to one who is striking at 
the root j^and it may be that he who bestows the largest 
amount of time and money on the needy is doing the 
most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he 
strives in vain to relieve. It is the pious slave-breeder de- 
voting the proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sun- 
day's liberty for the rest The philanthropist too 

often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own 
cast-off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. 



g6 LIBRARY NOTES. 

We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our 
health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that 

this does not spread by contagion If anything ail 

a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he 
have a pain in his bowels even, for that is the seat of 
sympathy, he forthwith sets about reforming — the world. 
Being a microcosm himself, he discovers — and it is a 
true discovery, and he is the man to make it — that the 
world has been eating green apples ; to his eyes, in fact, 
the globe itself is a great green apple, which there is dan- 
ger awful to think of that the children of men will nibble 
before it is ripe ; and straightway his drastic philanthropy 
seeks out the Esquimaux and the Patagonian, and em- 
braces the populous Indian and Chinese villages ; and 
thus, by a few years of philanthropic activity, the powers 
in the meanwhile using him for their own ends, no doubt, 
he cures himself of his dyspepsia, the globe acquires a 
faint blush on one or both of its cheeks, as if it were 
beginning to be ripe, and life loses its crudity and is once 
more sweet and wholesome to live. I never dreamed of 
any enormity greater than I have committed. I never 
knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself. 
.... My excuse for not lecturing against the use 
of tobacco is that I never chewed it ; that is a penalty 
which reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay ; though 
there are things enough I have chewed, which I could 
lecture against. If you should ever be betrayed into any 
of these philanthropies, do not let your left hand know 
what your right hand does, for it is not worth knowing. 
Rescue the drowning, and tie your shoe-strings. Take 
your time, and set about some free labor." 

It has been observed that persons who are themselves 
very pure are sometimes on that account blunt in their 
moral feelings. " Right, too rigid, hardens into wrong " 
— even into cruelty sometimes. A friend of one of these 
malicious philanthropists dined with him one day, and 



STANDARDS. 97 

afterward related an anecdote illustrative of his charac- 
ter. While at the table, the children of the refining hu- 
manitarian, playing about the open door, were noisy and in- 
tractable, which caused him to speak to them impatiently. 
The disturbance, however, did not cease, and hearing one 
of the children cry out, he jumped spasmodically from the 
table, and demanded to know what was the matter. Upon 
being informed that one of them had accidentally pinched 
the finger of another, he immediately seized the hand of 
the innocent offender, and placing the forefinger at the 
hinge of the door, deliberately closed it — crushing the 
poor child's finger as a punishment. There is another 
equally authentic story of a reformer who hired his chil- 
dren to go to bed without their supper as a means of 
preserving their health, and then stole their money back 
again to pay them for the next abstinence. 

" I have never known a trader in philanthropy," says 
Coleridge, "who was not wrong in head or heart some- 
where or other. Individuals so distinguished are usually 
unhappy in their family relations : men not benevolent or 
beneficent to individuals, but almost hostile to them ; yet 
lavishing money and labor and time on the race, the ab- 
stract notion.'"' "This is always true of those men," says 
Hawthorne, in his analysis of Hollingsworth, " who have 
surrendered themselves to an overruling power. It does 
not so much impel them from without, nor even operate 
as a motive power from within, but grows incorporate in 
all they think and feel, and finally converts them into lit- 
tle else save that one principle. When such begins to be 
the predicament, it is not cowardice, but wisdom, to avoid 
these victims. They have no heart, no sympathy, no rea- 
son, no conscience. They will keep no friend, unless he 
make himself the mirror of their purpose ; they will smite 
and slay you, and trample your dead corpse under foot, 
all the more readily, if you take the first step with them, 
and cannot take the second, and the third, and every 
7 



98 LIBRARY NOTES. 

other step of their terribly straight path. They have an 
idol, to which they consecrate themselves high-priest, and 
deem it holy work to offer sacrifices of whatever is most 
precious ; and never once seem to suspect — so cunning 
has the devil been with them — that this false deity, in 
whose iron features, immitigable to all the rest of man- 
kind, they see only benignity and love, is but a spectrum 
of the very priest himself, projected upon the surround- 
ing darkness. And the higher and purer the original 
object, and the more unselfishly it may have been taken 
up, the slighter is the probability that they can be led to 
recognize the process by which godlike benevolence has 
been debased into all-devouring egotism." 

The same writer, in one of his minor productions, says, 
" When a good man has long devoted himself to a partic- 
ular kind of beneficence, to one species of reform, he is 
apt to become narrowed into the limits of the path where- 
in he treads, and to fancy that there is no other good to 
be done on earth but that self-same good to which he has 
put his hand, and in the very mode that best suits his own 
conceptions. All else is worthless. His scheme must be 
wrought out by the united strength of the whole world's 
stock of love, or the world is no longer worthy of a posi- 
tion in the universe. Moreover, powerful Truth, being 
the rich grape-juice expressed from the vineyard of the 
ages, has an intoxicating quality when imbibed by any 
save a powerful intellect, and often, as it were, impels 
the quaffer to quarrel in his cups." 

At a dinner-party one day, Madame de Stael said to 
Lady Mackintosh, after Godwin was gone, " I am glad to 
have seen this man, — it is curious to see how naturally 
Jacobins become the advocates of tyrants." 

"I have often blamed myself," said Boswell, "for not 
feeling for others as sensibly as many say they do." 
"Sir," replied Johnson, "don't be duped by them any 
more. You will find these very feeling people are not 
very ready to do you good. They pay you by feeling." 



STANDARDS. 99 

A very large proportion of the men who during the 
French Revolution proved themselves most absolutely in- 
different to human suffering, were deeply attached to ani- 
mals. Fournier was devoted to a squirrel, Couthon to a 
spaniel, Panis to two gold pheasants, Chaumette to an 
aviary, Marat kept doves. Bacon has noticed that the 
Turks, who are a most cruel people, are nevertheless con- 
spicuous for their kindness to animals, and he mentions 
the instance of a Christian boy who was nearly stoned to 
death for gagging a long-billed fowl. Abbas, the vice- 
roy, when a boy, had his pastry-cook bastinadoed to 
death. Mehemet AH mildly reproved him for it, as a Eu- 
ropean would correct a child for killing a butterfly. He 
explained to his little grandson that such things ought 
not to be done, without a motive. Abbe Migne tells how 
one old Roman fed his oysters on his slaves ; how another 
put a slave to death that a curious friend might see what 
dying was like ; how Galen's mother tore and bit her 
waiting-women when she was in a passion with them. Ca- 
ligula conferred the honor of priesthood upon his horse. 
"The day before the Circensian games," says Suetonius, 
"he used to send his soldiers to enjoin silence in the 
neighborhood, that the repose of the animal might not be 
disturbed. For this favorite, besides a marble stable, an 
ivory manger, purple housings, and a jeweled frontlet, he 
appointed a house, with a retinue of slaves, and fine fur- 
niture, for the reception of such as were invited in the 
horse's name to sup with him. It is even said that he 
intended to make him consul." In Egypt there are hos- 
pitals for superannuated cats, and the most loathsome 
insects are regarded with tenderness ; but human life is 
treated as if it were of no account, and human suffering 
scarcely elicits a care. 

Sydney Smith advised the bishop of New Zealand, pre- 
vious to his departure, to have regard to the minor as 
well as to the more grave duties of his station — to be 



100 LIBRARY NOTES. 

given to hospitality, and, in order to meet the tastes of 
his native guests, never to be without a smoked little boy 
in the bacon-rack, and a cold clergyman on the sideboard. 
"And as for myself, my lord," he concluded, "all I can 
say is, that when your new parishioners do eat you, I sin- 
cerely hope you will disagree with them." 

Lamb once told a droll story of an India-house clerk 
accused of eating man's flesh, and remarked that " among 
cannibals those who rejected the favorite dish would be 
called misanthropists." 

The eternal barbarisms must not be forgotten by the 
reformer while he is reforming the barbarians. The 
pagan Frisians, that illustrious northern German tribe, 
afterward known as the " free Frisians," " whose name is 
synonymous with liberty, — nearest blood-relations of the 
Anglo-Saxon race," — struggled for centuries against the 
dominion of the Franks, and were only eventually subju- 
gated by Charlemagne, who left them their name of free 
Frisians. " The Frisians," says their statute-book, " shall 
be free as long as the wind blows out of the clouds and 
the world stands." Radbod, their chief, was first over- 
come by Pepin the younger, and Pepin's bastard, Charles 
the Hammer, with his "tremendous blows, completed his 
father's work ; " he " drove the Frisian chief into submis- 
sion, and even into Christianity. A bishop's indiscretion, 
however, neutralized the apostolic blows " of the Chris- 
tian conqueror. " The pagan Radbod had already im- 
mersed one of his royal legs in the baptismal font, when 
a thought struck him. ' Where are my dead forefathers 
at present ? ' he said, turning suddenly upon Bishop Wolf- 
ran. ' In hell, with all other unbelievers,' was the impru- 
dent answer. ' Mighty well,' replied Radbod, removing 
his leg, ' then will I rather feast with my ancestors in the 
halls of Woden, than dwell with your little starveling band 
of Christians in heaven.' Entreaties and threats were 
unavailing. The Frisian declined positively a rite which 



STANDARDS. 10 1 

was to cause an eternal separation from his buried kin- 
dred, and he died as he had lived, a heathen." 

Tomochichi, chief of the Chickasaws, said to Wesley, 
" I will go up and speak to the wise men of the nation, 
and I hope they will hear. But we would not be made 
Christians as the Spaniards make Christians ; we would 
be taught before we are baptised." He felt the want un- 
consciously acknowledged by the King of Siam, spoken 
of by John Locke in his chapter on Probability. A Dutch 
ambassador, when entertaining the king with the peculiari- 
ties of Holland, amongst other things told the sovereign 
that the water in Holland would sometimes in cold weather 
be so hard that men walked upon it, and that it would 
bear an elephant if he were there. To which the king 
replied, " Hitherto I have believed the strange things you 
have told me, because I looked upon you as a sober, fair 
man, but now I am sure you lie." But Tomochichi had 
an eye that saw the faults of the colonists, if he did not 
understand their religion. When urged to listen to the 
doctrines of Christianity he keenly replied, "Why, these 
are Christians at Savannah ! these are Christians at Fred- 
erica ! Christian much drunk ! Christian beat men ! 
Christian tell lies ! Devil Christian ! Me no Christian ! " 
This recalls the pathetic story of the West Indian cazique, 
who, at the stake, refused life, temporal or eternal, at the 
price of conversion, asking where he should go to live so 
happily. He was told — in heaven ; and then he at once 
refused, on the ground that the whites would be there ; and 
he had rather live anywhere, or nowhere, than dwell with 
such people as he had found the white Christians to be. 
Almost the first word, says Dr. Medhurst, uttered by a 
Chinese, when anything is said concerning the excellence 
of Christianity, is, " Why do Christians bring us opium, 
and bring it directly in defiance of our laws ? The vile 
drug has destroyed my son, has ruined my brother, and 
well-nigh led me to beggar my wife and children. Surely 



102 LIBRARY NOTES. 

those who import such a deleterious substance, and injure 
me for the sake of gain, cannot wish me well, or be in 
possession of a religion better than my own. Go first 
and persuade your own countrymen to relinquish their 
nefarious traffic ; and give me a prescription to correct 
this vile habit, and then I will listen to your exhortations 
on the subject of Christianity ! " Dr. Livingstone says 
he found a tribe of men in the interior of Africa so pure 
and simple that they seemed to have no idea of untruth- 
fulness and dishonesty until they were brought into con- 
tact with Asiatics and Europeans. Some of Dr. Kane's 
men, " while resting at Kalutunah's tent, had appropriated 
certain fox-skins, boots, and sledges, which their condition 
seemed to require. The Esquimaux complained of the 
theft, and Dr. Kane, after a careful inquiry into the case, 
decided in their favor. He gave each five needles, a file, 
and a stick of wood, and knives and other extras to Kalu- 
tunah and Shanghu, and after regaling them with a hearty 
supper, he returned the stolen goods, and tried to make 
them believe that his people did not steal, but only took 
the articles to save their lives ! In imitation of this Arctic 
morality the natives, on their departure, carried off a few 
knives and forks, which they deemed as essential to their 
happiness as the fox-dresses were to the white men." 

Among the airy visions which had been generated in 
the teeming brain of Coleridge, says a writer in The Lon- 
don Quarterly, was the project of pantisocracy — a re- 
public to be founded in the wilds of America, of which 
the fundamental principles were an equality of rank and 
property, and where all who composed it were to be un- 
der the perpetual dominion of reason, virtue, and love. 
Southey was inflamed by it and converted. Through it 
he saw a way out of all his troubles. There he would 
enjoy the felicity of living in a pure democracy, where he 
could sit unelbowed by kings and aristocrats. " You," 
he wrote to his brother Tom, " are unpleasantly situated, 



STANDARDS. 103 

so is my mother, so were we all till this grand scheme of 
pantisocracy flashed upon our minds, and now all is per- 
fectly delightful. ,, Coleridge, contented to have delivered 
a glowing description of Utopia, did nothing further, and 
departed on a pedestrian tour through Wales, where, as 
the ridiculous will sometimes mingle itself with the sub- 
lime, he feared he had caught the itch from an admiring 
democratical auditor at an inn, who insisted upon shaking 
hands with him. Some time after, Southey, having tried 
his panacea upon a few select pantisocratic friends, wrote, 
" There was a time when I believed in the persuadability 
of man, and had the mania of man-mending. Experience 
has taught me better. The ablest physician can do little 
in the great lazar-house of society. He acts the wisest 
part who retires from the contagion." 

" Nature goes her own way," said Goethe, " and all 
that to us seems an exception is really according to or- 
der." He quoted the saying of Rousseau, that you cannot 
hinder an earthquake by building a city near a burning 
mountain. Peter the Great, he said, repeated Amsterdam 
so dear to his youth, in locating St. Petersburg at the 
mouth of the Neva. The ground rises in the neighbor- 
hood, and the emperor could have had a city quite free 
from all the trouble arising from overflow if he had but 
gone a little higher up. An old shipmaster represented 
this to him, and prophesied that the people would be 
drowned every seventy years. There stood also an old 
tree, with various marks from times when the waters had 
risen to a great height. But all was in vain ; the emperor 
stood to his whim, and had the tree cut down, that it 
might not be witness against him ! Sydney Smith said 
of a certain fanatical member of Parliament, that "he 
was losing his head. When he brings forward his Suck- 
ling Act, he will be considered as quite mad. No woman 
to be allowed to suckle her own child without medical 
certificates. Three classes, viz., free-sucklers, half-suck- 



104 LIBRARY NOTES. 

lers, and spoon-meat mothers. Mothers, whose supply is 
uncertain, to suckle upon affidavit ! How is it possible 
that an act of Parliament can supply the place of nature 
and natural affection ? " 

" There is in nature," said Goethe to Soret, " an access- 
ible and an inaccessible. Be careful to discriminate be- 
tween the two, be circumspect, and proceed with rever- 
ence." "The sight of a primitive phenomenon," he said 
to Eckermann, " is generally not enough for people ; they 
think they must go still further ; and are thus like chil- 
dren who, after peeping into a mirror, turn it round di- 
rectly to see what is on the other side." " When one," 
said he on another occasion, " has looked about him in 
the world long enough to see how the most judicious 
enterprises frequently fail, and the most absurd have the 
good fortune to succeed, he becomes disinclined to give 
any one advice. At bottom, he who asks advice shows 
himself limited ; he who gives it gives also proof that he 
is presumptuous. If any one asks me for good advice, I 
say, I will give it, but only on condition that you will 

promise not to take it Much is said of aristocracy 

and democracy ; but the whole affair is simply this : in 
youth, when we either possess nothing, or know not how 
to value the tranquil possession of anything, we are dem- 
ocrats ; but when we, in a long life, have come to pos- 
sess something of our own, we wish not only ourselves to 
be secure of it, but that our children and grandchildren 
should be secure of inheriting it. Therefore, we always 
lean to aristocracy in our old age, whatever were our opin- 
ions in youth." 

Lord Eldon said in his old age, "that, if he were to 
begin life again, he would be damned but he would begin 
as agitator." " I am no more ashamed of having been a 
republican," said Southey, " than I am of having been a 
child." Barere, who said that " the tree of liberty cannot 
flourish unless it is watered by the blood of kings and 



STANDARDS. 105 

aristocrats " — who proposed the famous decree for the 
annihilation of Lyons — devoted a great part of his later 
life to declaiming on the necessity of entirely abolishing 
capital punishments. 

Elliott, the Corn-Law Rhymer, being asked, " What is 
a communist ? " answered, " One who has yearnings for 
equal division of unequal earnings. Idler or bungler, he 
is willing to fork out his penny and pocket your shilling." 

" Sir," said Johnson, " your levelers wish to level down 
as far as themselves ; but they cannot bear leveling up to 
themselves. They would all have some people under 
them ; why not then have some people above them ? " 

Margaret Fuller, speaking of the greatest of German 
poets, says, " He believes more in man than men, effort 
than success, thought than action, nature than provi- 
dence. He does not insist on my believing with him." 

"He who would help himself and others," says Emer- 
son, "should not be a subject of irregular and interrupted 
impulses of virtue, but a continent, persisting, immov- 
able person, — such as we have seen a few scattered up 
and down in time for the blessing of the world ; men who 
have in the gravity of their nature a quality which an- 
swers to the fly-wheel in a mill, which distributes the mo- 
tion equally over all the wheels, and hinders it from fall- 
ing unequally and suddenly in destructive shocks. It is 
better that joy should be spread over all the day in the 
form of strength, than that it should be concentrated 
into ecstasies, full of danger, and followed by reactions." 
" It only needs that a just man should walk in our streets, 
to make it appear how pitiful and inartificial a contriv- 
ance is our legislation. The man whose part is taken, 
and who does not wait for society in anything, has a 
power which society cannot choose but feel." 

What a character was Sir Isaac Newton ! He is de- 
scribed as modest, candid, and affable, and without any 
of the eccentricities of genius, suiting himself to ever)' 



106 LIBRARY NOTES. 

company, and speaking of himself and others in such a 
manner that he was never even suspected of vanity. 
" But this," says Dr. Pemberton, " I immediately discov- 
ered in him, which at once both surprised and charmed 
me. Neither his extreme great age, nor his universal 
reputation, had rendered him stiff in opinion, or in any 
degree elated." His modesty arose from the depth and 
extent of his knowledge, which showed him what a small 
portion of nature he had been able to examine, and how 
much remained to be explored in the same field in which 
he had himself labored. In a letter to Leibnitz, 1675, 
he observes, " I was so persecuted with discussions aris- 
ing out of my theory of light, that I blamed my own im- 
prudence for parting with so substantial a blessing as 
my quiet, to run after a shadow." Nearly a year after 
his complaint to Leibnitz, he uses the following remark- 
able expression in a communication to Oldenburg : " I 
see I have made myself a slave to philosophy ; but if I 
get free of Mr. Linus's business, I will resolutely bid 
adieu to it eternally, excepting what I do for my private 
satisfaction, or leave to come out after me ; for I see a 
man must either resolve to put out nothing new, or to 
become a slave to defend it." His assistant and amanu- 
ensis for five years (Humphrey Newton) never heard him 
laugh but once in all that time : " 'T was upon occasion 
of asking a friend, to whom he had lent Euclid to read, 
what progress he had made in that author, and how he 
liked him. He answered by desiring to know what use 
and benefit in life that study would be to him. Upon 
which Sir Isaac was very merry." He was once disor- 
dered with pains at the stomach, which confined him for 
some days to his bed, but which he bore with a great 
deal of patience and magnanimity, seemingly indifferent 
either to live or to die. " He seeing me," said his assist- 
ant, " much concerned at his illness, bid me not trouble 
myself ; ' For if I die,' said Sir Isaac, ' I shall leave you 



STANDARDS. 107 

an estate,' which he then for the fiist time mentioned." 
Says Bishop Atterbury, " In the whole air of his face 
and make there was nothing of that penetrating sagacity 
which appears in his compositions. He had something 
rather languid in his look and maner, which did not raise 
any great expectations in those who did not know him." 
When Pope expressed a wish for " some memoirs and 
character of Newton, as a private man," he did " not 
doubt that his life and manners would make as great a 
discovery of virtue and goodness and rectitude of heart, 
as his works have done of penetration and the utmost 
stretch of human knowledge." When Vigani told him "a 
loose story about a nun," he gave up his acquaintance ; 
and when Dr. Halley ventured to say anything disre- 
spectful to religion, he invariably checked him with the 
remark, "I have studied these things, — you have not." 
When he was asked to take snuff or tobacco, he declined, 
remarking " that he would make no necessities to him- 
self." Bishop Burnet said that he "valued him for some- 
thing still more valuable than all his philosophy, — for 
having the whitest soul he ever knew." 

Slowly and modestly the great in all things is devel- 
oped. "Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet 
they grind exceeding small." Look at the Netherlands. 
" Three great rivers — the Rhine, the Meuse, and the 
Scheldt — had deposited their slime for ages among the 
dunes and sand-banks heaved up by the ocean around 
their mouths. A delta was thus formed, habitable at last 
for man. It was by nature a wide morass, in which oozy 
islands and savage forests were interspersed among la- 
goons and shallows ; a district lying partly below the 
level of the ocean at its higher tides, subject to constant 
overflow from the rivers, and to frequent and terrible in- 
undations by the sea. Here, within a half submerged 
territory, a race of wretched ichthyophagi dwelt upon 
mounds, which they had raised, like beavers, above the 



108 LIBRARY NOTES. 

almost fluid soil. Here, at a later day, the same race 
chained the tyrant Ocean and his mighty streams into 
subserviency, forcing them to fertilize, to render commo- 
dious, to cover with a beneficent net-work of veins and 
arteries, and to bind by watery highways, with the far- 
thest ends of the world, a country disinherited by nature 
of its rights. A region outcast of ocean and earth wrested 
at last from both domains their richest treasures. A 
race engaged for generations in stubborn conflict with 
the angry elements was unconsciously educating itself 
for its great struggle with the still more savage despotism 
of man." 

In the central part of a range of the Andes, at an ele- 
vation of about seven thousand feet, on a bare slope, 
may be observed some snow-white projecting columns. 
These are petrified trees, eleven being silicified, and from 
thirty to forty converted into coarsely crystallized white 
calcaraeous spar. They are abruptly broken off, the up- 
right stumps projecting a few feet above the ground. 
The trunks measured from three to five feet each in cir- 
cumference. They stood a little way apart from each 
other, but the whole formed one group. The volcanic 
sandstone in which the trees were imbedded, and from 
the lower part of which they must have sprung, had 
accumulated in successive thin layers around their trunks, 
and the stone yet retained the impression of the bark. 
"It required," says the eminent scientific man who visited 
the spot in 1835, "little geological practice to interpret 
the marvelous story which this scene at once unfolded. 
I saw the spot where a cluster of fine trees once reared 
their branches on the shores of the Atlantic, when that 
ocean, now driven back seven hundred miles, came to the 
foot of the Andes. I saw that they had sprung from a 
volcanic soil which had been raised above the level of the 
sea, and that subsequently this dry land, with its upright 
trees, had been let down into the depths of the ocean. In 



STANDARDS. IO9 

these depths, the formerly dry land was covered by sedi- 
mentary beds, and these again by enormous streams of 
submarine lava — one such mass attaining the thickness 
of a thousand feet; and these deluges of molten stone 
and aqueous deposits five times alternately had been 
spread out. The ocean which received such thick masses 
must have been profoundly deep ; but again the sub- 
terranean forces exerted themselves, and I now beheld 
the bed of that ocean, forming a chain of mountains more 
than seven thousand feet in height. Nor had those 
antagonist forces been dormant which are always at work, 
wearing down the surface of the land ; the great piles of 
strata had been intersected by many wide valleys, and the 
trees, now changed into silex, were exposed projecting 
from the volcanic soil, now changed into rocks, whence 
formerly, in a green and budding state, they had raised 
their lofty heads." 

" The world," said Goethe, " is not so framed that it 
can keep quiet ; the great are not so that they will not 
permit misuse of power ; the masses not so that, in hope 
of a gradual amelioration, they will keep tranquil in an 
inferior condition. Could we perfect human nature, we 
might expect perfection everywhere ; but as it is, there 
will always be this wavering hither and thither ; one part 
must suffer while the other is at ease." " It is with 
human things," says Froude, " as it is with the great ice- 
bergs which drift southward out of the frozen seas. They 
swim two thirds under water, and one third above ; and 
so long as the equilibrium is sustained you would think 
that they were as stable as the rocks. But the sea water 
is warmer than the air. Hundreds of fathoms down, the 
tepid current washes the base of the berg. Silently in 
those far deeps the centre of gravity is changed; and 
then, in a moment, with one vast roll, the enormous mass 
heaves over, and the crystal peaks which had been 
glancing so proudly in the sunlight are buried in the 



110 LIBRARY NOTES. 

ocean forever." "The secret which you would fain keep, 
as soon as you go abroad, lo ! there is one standing on 
the door-step to tell you the same." The revolution is 
all at once ripe, and the bottom is at the top again. No- 
body and everybody is responsible. " It is seldom," says 
John Gait, in his life of Wolsey, " that any man can sway 
the current of national affairs ; but a wide and earnest 
system of action never fails to produce results which re- 
semble the preexpected effects of particular designs." 
At the gorgeous coronation of Napoleon, some one asked 
the republican general Augereau whether anything was 
i wanting to the splendor of the scene. " Nothing," re- 
plied Augereau, "but the presence of the million of men 
who have died to do away with all this." 

You remember the value, to the cause of civil liberty 
and Christianity, of the accidental epithet of " beggars," 
applied to the three hundred nobles who petitioned Mar- 
garet of Parma for a stay of the edicts of Philip and the 
Inquisition, about to be terribly executed upon the re- 
bellious Protestants under the leadership of William of 
Orange. Motley, in his Dutch Republic, gives a vivid 
account of it. The duchess was agitated and irritated 
by the petition. "The Prince of Orange addressed a 
few words to the duchess, with the view of calming her 
irritation. He observed that the confederates were no 
seditious rebels, but loyal gentlemen, well-born, well- 
connected, and of honorable character. They had been 
influenced, he said, by an honest desire to save their 
country from impending danger, — not by avarice 01 
ambition. ' What, madam,' cried Berlaymont in a pas- 
sion, ' is it possible that your highness can entertain fears 
of these beggars ? Is it not obvious what manner of men 
they are ? They have not had wisdom enough to manage 
their own estates, and are they now to teach the king and 
your highness how to govern the country ? By the living 
God, if my advice were taken, their petition should have 



STANDARDS. 1 1 1 

a cudgel for a commentary, and we would make them go 
down the steps of the palace a great deal faster than they 
mounted them ! ' Afterward, as the three hundred gen- 
tlemen and nobles passed by the house of Berlaymont, 
that nobleman, standing at his window in company with 
Count Aremberg, repeated his jest : ' There go our fine 
beggars again. Look, I pray you, with what bravado 
they are passing before us ! ' ' They call us beggars,' said 
Brederode to the three hundred banqueting with him in 
the Calemburg mansion on that famous April night. ' Let 
us accept the name. We will contend with the Inquisi- 
tion, but remain loyal to the king, even till compelled to 
wear the beggar's sack.' He then beckoned to one of 
his pages, who brought him a leathern wallet, such as was 
worn at that day by professional mendicants, together 
with a large wooden bowl, which also formed part of their 
regular appurtenances. Brederode immediately hung the 
wallet around his neck, filled the bowl with wine, lifted it 
with both hands, and drained it at a draught. ' Long live 
the beggars ! ' he cried, as he wiped his beard and set the 
bowl down. ' Long live the beggars ! ' Then for the first 
time from the lips of those reckless nobles rose the 
famous cry, which was so often to ring over land and sea, 
amid blazing cities, on blood-stained decks, through the 
smoke and carnage of many a stricken field. The humor 
of Brederode was hailed with deafening shouts of ap- 
plause. The count then threw the wallet round the neck 
of his nearest neighbor, and handed him the wooden 
bowl. Each guest, in turn, donned the mendicant's 
knapsack. Pushing aside his golden goblet, each filled 
the beggar's bowl to the brim, and drained it to the beg- 
gars' health. Roars of laughter and shouts of 'Long 
live the beggars ! ' shook the walls of the stately mansion, 
as they were doomed never to shake again. The shib- 
boleth was invented. The conjuration which they had 
been anxiously seeking was found. Their enemies had 



112 LIBRARY NOTES. 

provided them with a spell which was to prove, in after 
days, potent enough to start a spirit from palace or hovel, 
forest or wave, as the deeds of the 'wild beggars/ the 
'wood beggars,' and the 'beggars of the sea' taught 
Philip at last to understand the nation which he had 
driven to madness." 

Johnny Appleseed, by which name Jonathan Chapman 
was known in every log-cabin from the Ohio River to the 
Northern Lakes, is an interesting character to remember. 
Barefooted, and with scanty clothing, he traversed the 
wilderness for many years, planting appleseeds in the 
most favorable situations. His self-sacrificing life made 
him a favorite with the frontier settlers — men, women, 
and especially children • even the savages treated him 
with kindness, and the rattlesnakes, it was said, hesitated 
to bite him. " During the war of 1812, when the frontier 
settlers were tortured and slaughtered by the savage allies 
of Great Britain, Johnny Appleseed continued his wander- 
ings, and was never harmed by the roving bands of hostile 
Indians. On many occasions the impunity with which he 
ranged the country enabled him to give the settlers warn- 
ing of approaching danger, in time to allow them to take 
refuge in their block-houses before the savages could at- 
tack them. An informant refers to one of these instances, 
when the news of Hull's surrender came like a thun- 
derbolt upon the frontier. Large bands of Indians and 
British were destroying everything before them, and mur- 
dering defenseless women and children, and even the 
block-houses were not always a sufficient protection. At 
this time Johnny traveled day and night, warning the peo- 
ple of the impending danger. He visited every cabin 
and delivered this message : ' The Spirit of the Lord is 
upon me, and He hath anointed me to blow the trumpet 
in the wilderness, and sound an alarm in the forest ; for 
behold, the tribes of the heathen are round about your 
doors, and a devouring flame followeth after them ! ' The 



STANDARDS. 113 

aged man who narrated this incident said that he could 
feel even then the thrill that was caused by this prophetic 
announcement of the wild-looking herald of danger, who 
aroused the family on a bright moonlight midnight with 
his piercing cry. Refusing all offers of food, and denying 
himself a moment's rest, he traversed the border day and 
night until he had warned every settler of the impending 
peril. Johnny also served as colporteur, systematically 
leaving with the settlers chapters of certain religious 
books, and calling for them afterward ; and was the first 
to engage in the work of protecting dumb brutes. He 
believed it to be a sin to kill any creature for food. No 
Brahman could be more concerned for the preservation 
of insect life, and the only occasion on which he destroyed 
a venomous reptile was a source of long regret, to which 
he could never refer without manifesting sadness. He 
had selected a suitable place for planting appleseeds on a 
small prairie, and in order to prepare the ground, he was 
mowing the long grass, when he was bitten by a rattle- 
snake. In describing the event he sighed heavily, and 
said, ' Poor fellow, he only just touched me, when I, in 
the heat of my ungodly passion, put the heel of my scythe 
in him, and went away. Some time afterward I went 
back, and there lay the poor fellow, dead ! ' " " He was 
a man, after all," — Hawthorne might have exclaimed of 
him, too, — " his Maker's own truest image, a philan- 
thropic man ! — not that steel engine of the devil's con- 
trivance — a philanthropist ! " 

John Brown, when he was twelve years old, from see- 
ing a negro slave of his own age cruelly beaten, began to 
hate slavery and love the slaves so intensely as " some- 
times to raise the question, Is God their Father ? " At 
forty, " he conceived the idea of becoming a liberator of 
the Southern slaves ; " at the same time " determined to 
let them know that they had friends, and prepared him- 
self to lead them to liberty. From the moment that he 
8 



114 LIBRARY NOTES. 

formed this resolution, he engaged in no business which 
he could not, without loss to his friends and family, wind 
up in fourteen days." His favorite texts of Scripture 
were, " Remember them that are in bonds as bound with 
them • " " Whoso stoppeth his ear at the cry of the 
poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard ; " 
" Whor.o mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker, and 
he that is glad at calamities shall not be unpunished ; " 
" Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when 
it is in the power of thine hand to do it." His favorite 
hymns were, " Blow ye the trumpet, blow ! " and " Why 
should we start and fear to die ? " "I asked him," said 
a child, " how he felt when he left the eleven slaves, taken 
from Missouri, safe in Canada ? His answer was, ' Lord, 
permit now thy servant to die in peace, for mine eyes 
have seen thy salvation. I could not brook the idea that 
any ill should befall them, or they be taken back to slav- 
ery. The arm of Jehovah protected us.' " " Upon one 
occasion, when one of the ex-governors of Kansas said to 
him that he was a marked man, and that the Missourians 
were determined, sooner or later, to take his scalp, the 
old man straightened himself up, with a glance of enthu- 
siasm and defiance in his gray eye. ' Sir,' said he, ' the 
angel of the Lord will camp round about me.' " On 
leaving his family the first time he went to Kansas, he 
said, "If it is so painful for us to part, with the hope of 
meeting again, how dreadful must be the separation for 
life of hundreds of poor slaves." " He deliberately de- 
termined, twenty years before his attack upon Harper's 
Ferry," says Higginson, " that at some future period he 
would organize an armed party, go into a slave State, and 
liberate a large number of slaves. Soon after, surveying 
professionally in the mountains of Virginia, he chose the 
very ground for the purpose. He said * God had estab- 
lished the Alleghany Mountains from the foundation of 
the world that they might one day be a refuge for fugitive 



STANDARDS. 115 

slaves. Visiting Europe afterward, he studied military- 
strategy for this purpose, even making designs for a new 
style of forest fortifications, simple and ingenious, to be 
used by parties of fugitive slaves when brought to bay. 
He knew the ground, he knew his plans, he knew him- 
self ; but where should he find his men ? Such men as 
he needed are not to be found ordinarily ; they must be 
reared. John Brown did not merely look for men, there- 
fore ; he reared them in his sons. Mrs. Brown had been 
always the sharer of his plans. ' Her husband always be- 
lieved,' she said, ' that he was to be an instrument in the 
hands of Providence, and she believed it too.' 'This 
plan had occupied his thoughts and prayers for twenty 
years.' ' Many a night he had lain awake and prayed 
concerning it.' " " He believed in human brotherhood, 
and in the God of Battles ; he admired Nat Turner, the 
negro patriot, equally with George Washington, the white 
American deliverer." " He secretly despised even the 
ablest antislavery orators. He could see ' no use in this 
talking,' he said. 'Talk is a national institution; but it 
does no manner of good to the slave.' " The year be- 
fore his attack, he uttered these sentences in conversa- 
tion : " Nat Turner, with fifty men, held Virginia five 
weeks. The same number, well organized and armed, 
can shake the system out of the State." " Give a slave 
a pike, and you make him a man. Deprive him of the 
means of resistance, and you keep him down." "The 
land belongs to the bondsman. He has enriched it, and 
been robbed of its fruits." "Any resistance, however 
bloody, is better than the system which makes every 
seventh woman a concubine." " A few men in the right, 
and knowing they are, can overturn a king. Twenty 
men in the Alleghanies could break slavery to pieces in 
two years." " When the bondsmen stand like men, the 
nation will respect them. It is necessary to teach them 
this." About the same time he said, in another conver- 



Il6 LIBRARY NOTES 

sation, " that it was nothing to die in a good cause, but 
an eternal disgrace to sit still in the presence of the bar- 
barities of American slavery." " Providence," said he, 
"has made me an actor, and slavery an outlaw." "Duty 
is the voice of God, and a man is neither worthy of a 
good home here, or a heaven, that is not willing to be in 
peril for a good cause." He scouted the idea of rest 
while he held " a commission direct from God Almighty 
to act against slavery." After his capture, and while he 
lay in blood upon the floor of the guard-house, he was 
asked by a bystander upon what principle he justified his 
acts ? " Upon the Golden Rule," he answered. " I pity 
the poor in bondage that have none to help them. That 
is why I am here ; it is not to gratify any personal ani- 
mosity, or feeling of revenge, or vindictive spirit. It is 
my sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged, that 
are as good as you, and as precious in the sight of God. 
I want you to understand, gentlemen, that I respect the 
rights of the poorest and weakest of the colored people, 
oppressed by the slave system, just as much as I do those 
of the most wealthy and powerful. That is the idea that 
has moved me, and that alone. We expected no reward 
except the satisfaction of endeavoring to do for those in 
distress — the greatly oppressed — as we would be done 
by. The cry of distress, of the oppressed, is my reason, 
and the only thing that prompted me to come here. I 
wish to say, furthermore, that you had better, all you peo- 
ple of the South, prepare yourselves for a settlement of 
this question. It must come up for settlement sooner 
than you are prepared for it, and the sooner you com- 
mence that preparation, the better for you. You may 
dispose of me very easily. I am nearly disposed of now ; 
but this question is still to be settled — this negro ques- 
tion, I mean. The end of that is not yet." In his " last 
speech," before sentence was passed upon him, he said, 
" This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of 



STANDARDS. \\y 

the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I sup- 
pose to be the Bible, or, at least, the New Testament. 
That teaches me that all things ' whatsoever I would that 
men should do unto me I should do even so to them.' 
It teaches me further, to 'remember them that are in 
bonds as bound with them.' I endeavored to act up to 
that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to understand 
that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to 
have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely 
admitted I have done, in behalf of his despised poor, was 
not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary 
that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the 
ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the 
blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in 
this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, 
cruel, and unjust enactments — I submit: so let it be 
done." In a postscript to a letter to a half-brother, writ- 
ten in prison, he said, " Say to my poor boys never to 
grieve for one moment on my account ; and should any 
of you live to see the time when you will not blush to 
own your relation to old John Brown, it will not be more 
strange than many things that have happened." In a 
letter to his old school-master, he said, " I have enjoyed 
much of life, as I was enabled to discover the secret of 
this somewhat early. It has been in making the prosper- 
ity and happiness of others my own ; so that really I have 
had a great deal of prosperity." To another he wrote, 
" I commend my poor family to the kind remembrance 
of all friends, but I well understand that they are not the 
only poor in our world. I ought to begin to leave off 
saying our world." In his last letter to his family, he 
said, " I am waiting the hour of my public murder with 
great composure of mind and cheerfulness, feeling the 
strong assurance that in no other possible way could I 
be used to so much advantage to the cause of God and 
of humanity, and that nothing that I or all my family 



Il8 LIBRARY NOTES. 

have sacrificed or suffered will be lost. Do not feel 
ashamed on my account, nor for one moment despair of 
the cause, or grow weary of well-doing. I bless God I 
never felt stronger confidence in the certain and near 
approach of a bright morning and glorious day than I 
have felt, and do now feel, since my confinement here." 
In a previous letter to his family, he said, " Never forget 
the poor, nor think anything you bestow on them to be 
lost to you, even though they may be as black as Ebed- 
melech, the Ethiopian eunuch, who cared for Jeremiah in 
the pit of the dungeon, or as black as the one to whom 
Philip preached Christ. ' Remember them that are in 
bonds as bound with them.'" As he stepped out of the 
jail-door, on his way to the gallows, " a black woman, 
with a little child in her arms, stood near his way. The 
twain were of the despised race for whose emancipation 
and elevation to the dignity of the children of God he was 
about to lay down his life. His thoughts at that moment 
none can know except as his acts interpret them. He 
stopped for a moment in his course, stooped over, and 
with the tenderness of one whose love is as broad as the 
brotherhood of man, kissed it affectionately. As he came 
upon an eminence near the gallows, he cast his eye over 
the beautiful landscape, and followed the windings of the 
Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance. He looked up 
earnestly at the sun, and sky, and all about, and then re- 
marked, 'This is a beautiful country. I have not cast 
my eyes over it before.' " " You are more cheerful than 
I am, Captain Brown," said the undertaker, who sat with 
him in the wagon. " Yes," answered the old man, " I 
ought to be." " ' Gentlemen, good-by,' he. said to two 
acquaintances, as he passed from the wagon to the scaf- 
fold, which he was first to mount. As he quietly awaited 
the necessary arrangements, he surveyed the scenery un- 
moved, looking principally in the direction of the people, 
in the far distance. * There is no faltering in his step,' 



STANDARDS. 



II 9 



wrote one who saw him, ' but firmly and erect he stands 
amid the almost breathless lines of soldiery that surround 
him. With a graceful motion of his pinioned right arm 
he takes the slouched hat from his head and carelessly 
casts it upon the platform by his side. His elbows and 
ankles are pinioned, the white cap is drawn over his eyes, 
the hangman's rope is adjusted around his neck.' ' Cap- 
tain Brown,' said the sheriff, ' you are not standing on 
the drop. Will you come forward?' 'I can't see you, 
gentlemen,' was the old man's answer, unfalteringly 
spoken ; ' you must lead me.' The sheriff led his pris- 
oner forward to the centre of the drop. ' Shall I give 
you a handkerchief,' he then asked, ' and let you drop it 
as^ a signal ? ' 'No; lam ready at any time ; but do not 
keep me needlessly waiting.' " 

"Give the corpse a good dose of arsenic, and make 
sure work of it ! " exclaimed a captain of Virginia militia. 

"The saint, whose martyrdom will make the gallows 
glorious like the cross ! " exclaimed the Massachusetts 
sage and seer. 

Froude's reflections upon the death of John Davis, the 
navigator, one of England's Forgotten Worthies, may well 
be applied to John Brown : " A melancholy end for such 
a man — the end of a warrior, not dying Epaminondas- 
like on the field of victory, but cut off in a poor brawl 
or ambuscade. Life with him was no summer holiday, 
but a holy sacrifice offered up to duty, and what his Mas- 
ter sent was welcome." It was " hard, rough, and thorny, 
trodden with bleeding feet and aching brow ; the life of 
which the cross is the symbol ; a battle which no peace 
follows, this side the grave ; which the grave gapes to 
finish, before the victory is won ; and — strange that it 
should be so — this is the highest life of man. Look 
back along the great names of history ; there is none 
whose life has been other than this. They to whom it 
has been given to do the really highest work in this earth, 



120 LIBRARY NOTES. 

whoever they are, Jew or Gentile, Pagan or Christian, 
warriors, legislators, philosophers, priests, poets, kings, 
slaves — one and all, their fate has been the same : the 
same bitter cup has been given to them to drink." 

" Whether on the scaffold high, 
Or in the battle's van, 
The fittest place where man can die 
Is where he dies for man." 



REWARDS. 

The Bishop of Llandaff was standing in the House 
of Lords, in company with Lords Thurlow and Loughbor- 
ough, when Lord Southampton accosted him : " I want 
your advice, my lord ; how am I to bring up my son so 
as to make him get forward in the world ? " " I know of 
but one way," replied the bishop ; " give him parts and 
poverty." Poussin, being shown a picture by a person 
of rank, remarked, " You only want a little poverty, sir, 
to make you a good painter." 

" The advantage of riches remains with him who pro- 
cured them, not with the heir." Yet, says Froude, " The 
man who with no labor of his own has inherited a fortune, 
ranks higher in the world's esteem than his father who 
made it. We take rank by descent. Such of us as have 
the longest pedigree, and are therefore the farthest re- 
moved from the first who made the fortune and founded 
the family, we are the noblest. The nearer to the fount- 
ain, the fouler the stream ; and that first ancestor, who 
has soiled his fingers by labor, is no better than a par- 
venu." 

Labor, curse though we call it, as things are, seems to 
be life's greatest blessing. " There is more fatigue," 
says Tom Brown, " and trouble in a lady than in the most 
laborious life ; who would not rather drive a wheelbarrow 
with nuts about the streets, or cry brooms, than be Ar- 
sennus?" (a fine gentleman). When Sir Horace Vere 
died, it was asked what had occasioned his death \ to 
which some one replied, "By doing nothing." "Too 



122 LIBRARY NOTES. 

much idleness," said Burke, "fills up a man's time much 
more completely, and leaves him less his own master than 
any sort of employment whatsoever." What to do ? how 
to do ? become distressing questions to him, and he finds 
himself in as great extremity as the man in the story of 
the Persian poet : " I saw," says Saadi, " an Arab sitting 
in a circle of jewelers of Basrah, and relating as follows : 
' Once on a time having missed my way in the desert, and 
having no provisions left, I gave myself up for lost ; when 
I happened to find a bag full of pearls. I shall never 
forget the relish and delight that I felt on supposing it to 
be fried wheat ; nor the bitterness and despair which I 
suffered on discovering that the bag contained pearls." 

In the executive chamber one evening, there were pres- 
ent a number of gentlemen, among them Mr. Seward. A 
point in the conversation suggesting the thought, the pres- 
ident said, " Seward, you never heard, did you, how I 
earned my first dollar ? " " No," rejoined Mr. Seward. 
" Well," continued Lincoln, " I was about eighteen years 
of age ; I belonged, you know, to what they call down 
South the ' scrubs ; ' people who do not own slaves are 
nobody there. But we had succeeded in raising, chiefly 
by my labor, sufficient produce, as I thought, to justify 
me in taking it down the river to sell. After much per- 
suasion, I got the consent of mother to go, and con- 
structed a little flat-boat, large enough to take a barrel or 
two of things that we had gathered, with myself and little 
bundle, down to New Orleans. A steamer was coming 
down the river. We have, you know, no wharves on the 
Western streams ; and the custom was, if passengers 
were at any of the landings, for them to go out in a boat, 
the steamer stopping and taking them on board. I was 
contemplating my new flat-boat, wondering whether I 
could make it stronger or improve it in any particular, 
when two men came down to the shore in carriages, with 
trunks, and looking at the different boats, singled out 



REWARDS. 123 

mine, and asked, ' Who owns this ? ' I answered, some- 
what modestly, ' I do.' ' Will you,' said one of them, 
* take us and our trunks out to the steamer ? ' ' Certainly,' 
said I. I was very glad to have the chance of earning 
something. I supposed that each of them would give me 
two or three bits. The trunks were put on my flat-boat 
the passengers seated themselves on the trunks, and I 
sculled them out to the steamboat. They got on board, 
and I lifted up their heavy trunks, and put them on deck. 
The steamer was about to put on steam again, when I 
called out that they had forgotten to pay me. Each of 
them took from his pocket a silver half-dollar, and threw 
it on the floor of my boat. I could scarcely believe my 
eyes as I picked up the money. Gentlemen, you may 
think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems 
to me a trifle; but it was a most important incident in 
my life. I could scarcely credit that I, a poor boy, had 
earned a dollar in less than a day, — that by honest work 
I had earned a dollar. The world seemed wider and 
fairer before me. I was a more hopeful and confident 
being from that time." 

Only such persons interest us, it has been said, who 
have stood in the jaws of need, and have by their own wit 
and might extricated themselves, and made man vic- 
torious. Young and old, all of us, have been intensely 
interested in knowing what Robinson Crusoe was to do 
with his few small means. Wonderful Robert Burns ! 
"While his youthful mother was still on the straw, the 
miserable clay cottage fell above her and the infant bard, 
who both narrowly escaped, first being smothered to 
death, and then of being starved by cold, as they were 
conveyed through frost and snow by night to another 
dwelling." While he was yet a child, the poverty of the 
family increased to wretchedness. The " cattle died, or 
were lost by accident ; the crops failed, and debts were 
accumulating. To these bufferings of misfortune the 



124 LIBRARY NOTES. 

family could oppose only hard labor and the most rigid 
economy. They lived so sparingly that butcher-meat was 
a stranger in their dwelling for years." " The farm proved 
a ruinous bargain," said the poet; "and to clinch the 
misfortune, we fell into the hands of a factor, who sat for 
the picture I have drawn of one in my tale of Twa Dogs. 
My indignation yet boils at the recollection of the scoun- 
drel factor's insolent letters, which used to set us all in 
tears. This kind of life — the cheerless gloom of a her- 
mit, with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave — brought 
me to my sixteenth year; a little before which period 

I first committed the sin of rhyme My passions, 

when once lighted up, raged like so many devils, till they 
got vent in rhyme ; and then the conning over my verses, 
like a spell, soothed all into quiet." 

Edmund Kean's early life was very wretched. It was 
after his marriage that we find him " strolling in the old 
misery, giving an entertainment at Dumfries to pay his 
lodging. One six-penny auditor alone came." (Once, we 
are told, he absented himself from his home in Exeter 
for three days. To the question of where he had been, 
he replied, grandiloquently, " I have been doing a noble 
action; I have been drinking these three days with a 
brother actor who is leaving Exeter, to keep up his spir- 
its.") After rehearsal, and before his appearance at 
Drury Lane, he exclaimed prophetically, " My God ! if I 
succeed I shall go mad ! " Drunk with delight, he rushed 
home, and with half-frenzied incoherency poured forth the 
story of his triumph. " The pit rose at me ! " he cried. 
"Mary, you shall ride in your carriage yet!" "Charles," 
lifting the child from his bed, " shall go to Eton." Then 
his voice faltered, and he murmured, "If Howard (his 
recently deceased child) had but lived to see it ! " 

Among the companions of Reynolds, when he was 
studying his art at Rome, was a fellow-pupil of the name 
of Astley. They made an excursion, with some others, on 



REWARDS. 125 

a sultry day, and all except Astley took off their coats. 
After several taunts he was persuaded to do the same, and 
displayed on the back of his waistcoat a foaming water- 
fall. Distress had compelled him to patch his clothes 
with one of his own landscapes. Henderson, the actor, 
after a simple reading of a newspaper, repeated such an 
enormous portion of it as seemed utterly marvelous. " If 
you had been obliged, like me," he said, in reply to the 
surprise expressed by his auditors, "to depend during 
many years for your daily bread on getting words by heart, 
you would not be so much astonished at habit having pro- 
duced the facility." Amyot was a servant at college, and 
studied, like Ramus, by the light of burning charcoal from 
want of candles ; but his translations earned him a mitre 
as well as renown. Duchatel rose from being reader in a 
printing-office to be grand almoner of France ; and was 
paid by the king to talk to him during his meals. 

Excellence is not matured in a day, and the cost of it 
is an old story. The beginning of Plato's Republic was 
found in his tablets written over and over in a variety of 
ways. It took Virgil, it is stated, three years to compose 
his ten short eclogues ; seven years to elaborate his Geor- 
gics, which comprise little more than two thousand verses ; 
and he employed more than twelve years in polishing his 
^Eneid, being even then so dissatisfied with it, that he 
wished before his death to commit it to the flames. 
Horace was equally indefatigable, and there are single 
odes in his works which must have cost him months of 
labor. Lucretius's one poem represents the toil of a 
whole lifetime. Thucydides was twenty years writing his 
history, which is comprised in one octavo volume. Gib- 
bon wrote the first chapter of his work three times before 
he could please himself. Montesquieu, alluding in a let- 
ter to one of his works, says to his correspondent, " You 
will read it in a few hours, but the labor expended on 
it has whitened my hair." Henri Beyle transcribed his 



126 LIBRARY NOTES. 

History of Painting in Italy seventeen times. Sainte- 
Beuve often spent a whole week on two or three octavo 
pages. Gray was so fastidious in polishing and perfect- 
ing his Elegy, that he kept it nearly twenty years, touch- 
ing it up and improving it. There is a poem of ten lines 
in Waller's works, which he himself informs us, took him 
a whole summer to put into shape. Malherbe would spoil 
half a quire of paper in composing and discomposing and 
recomposing a stanza. It is reckoned that during the 
twenty-five most prolific years of his life he composed no 
more than, on the average, thirty-three verses per annum. 
There is a good story told of him, which illustrates amus- 
ingly the elaborate care he took with his poems. A cer- 
tain nobleman of his acquaintance had lost his wife, and 
was anxious that Malherbe should dedicate an ode to her 
memory, and condole with him in verse on the loss he 
had sustained. Malherbe complied, but was so fastidious 
in his composition, that it was three years before the 
elegy was completed. Just before he sent it in, he was 
intensely chagrined to find that his noble friend had 
solaced himself with a new bride, and was, consequently, 
in no humor to be pestered with an elegy on his old one. 
When dying, his confessor, in speaking of the happiness 
in heaven, expressed himself inaccurately. " Say no more 
about it," said Malherbe, " or your style will disgust me 
with it." Miss Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Hume, and 
Fox, have all recorded the trouble they took. Tasso 
was unwearied in correcting ■ so were Pope and Boileau. 
The Cambridge manuscript of Milton's Lycidas shows 
numerous erasures and interlineations. Pascal spent 
twenty days in perfecting a single letter. The fables of 
La Fontaine were copied and re-copied over and over 
again. Alfieri was laboriously painstaking in composition. 
We are told that if he approved of his first sketch of a 
piece — after laying it by for some time, nor approaching 
it again until his mind was free of the subject — he sub- 



REWARDS. 127 

mitted it to what he called " development " — writing out 
in prose the indicated scenes, with all the force at his 
command, but without stopping to analyze a thought or 
correct an expression. He then proceeded to verify at 
his leisure the prose he had written, selecting with care 
the ideas he thought best, and rejecting those which he 
deemed unworthy of a place. Nor did he even yet re- 
gard his work as finished, but incessantly polished it verse 
by verse, and made continual alterations. Moliere com- 
posed very slowly, although he liked the contrary to be 
understood, and many pieces supposed to have been writ- 
ten upon the spur of a royal command, had been prepared 
some time previously. He said to Boileau, " I have never 
done anything with which I am truly content." Sheridan, 
when urged by the publisher, Ridgeway, to finish his 
manuscript of The School for Scandal, declared that he 
had been nineteen years endeavoring to satisfy himself 
with the style of it, but had not succeeded. Joubert had 
a habit from his twentieth year to his seventieth, of jotting 
down with pencil the best issues of his meditation as they 
arose ; and out of this chaos of notes was shaped, many 
years after his death, a full volume of Thoughts, " which," 
says the translator, "from their freshness and insight, 
their concise symmetry of expression, their pithiness, their 
variety, make a rich, enduring addition to the literature of 
France, and to all literature." Addison wore out the pa- 
tience of his printer; frequently, when nearly a whole 
impression of a Spectator was worked off, he would stop 
the press to insert a new preposition. Lamb's most sport- 
ive essays were the result of most intense labor ; he used 
to spend a week at a time in elaborating a single humor- 
ous letter to a friend. Tennyson is reported to have 
written Come into the Garden, Maud, more than fifty 
times over before it pleased him ; and Locksley Hall, the 
first draught of which was written in two days, he spent 
the better part of six weeks, for eight hours a day, in alter- 



128 LIBRARY NOTES. 

ing and polishing. Dickens, when he intended to write 
a Christmas story, shut himself up for six weeks, lived the 
life of a hermit, and came out looking as haggard as a 
murderer. His manuscripts show that he wrote with the 
greatest care, and scrupulously revised his writing in 
order to render each sentence as perfect as might be. 
He made his alterations so carefully that it is difficult to 
trace the words which he had originally written. In many 
instances " the primary words have been erased so care- 
fully that it is next to impossible to form an idea of how 
the passages originally stood." Balzac, after he had 
thought out thoroughly one of his philosophical romances, 
and amassed his materials in a most laborious manner, 
retired to his study, and from that time until his book had 
gone to press, society saw him no more. When he ap- 
peared again among his friends, he looked, said his pub- 
lisher, in the popular phrase, like his own ghost. The 
manuscript was afterward altered and copied, when it 
passed into the hands of the printer, from whose slips the 
book was re-written for the third time. Again it went 
into the hands of the printer, — two, three, and sometimes 
four separate proofs being required before the author's 
leave could be got to send the perpetually re-written book 
to press at last, and so have done with it. He was liter- 
ally the terror of all printers and editors. Moore thought 
it quick work if he wrote seventy lines of Lalla Rookh in 
a week. Kinglake's Eothen, we are told, was re-written 
five or six times, and was kept in the author's writing-desk 
almost as long as Wordsworth kept the White Doe of 
Rylstone, and kept like that to be taken out for review 
and correction almost every day. Buffon's Studies of 
Nature cost him fifty years of labor, and he re-copied it 
eighteen times before he sent it to the printer. "He 
composed in a singular manner, writing on large-sized 
paper, in which, as in a ledger, five distinct columns were 
ruled. In the first column he wrote down the first 



REWARDS. 



129 



thoughts ; in the second, he corrected, enlarged, and 
pruned it \ and so on, until he had reached the fifth col- 
umn, within which he finally wrote the result of his labor. 
But even after this, he would re-compose a sentence twenty- 
times, and once devoted fourteen hours to finding the 
proper word with which to round off a period." John 
Foster often spent hours on a single sentence. Ten years 
elapsed between the first sketch of Goldsmith's Traveller 
and its completion. The poet's habit was to set down 
his ideas in prose, and, when he had turned them care- 
fully into rhyme, to continue retouching the lines with 
infinite pains to give point to the sentiment and polish to 
the verse. La Rochefoucauld spent fifteen years in pre- 
paring his little book of Maxims, altering some of them, 
Segrais says, nearly thirty times. Rogers showed a friend 
a note to his Italy, which, he said, took him a fortnight to 
write. It consists of a very few lines. We all know how 
Sheridan polished his wit and finished his jokes, the same 
surprising things being found on different bits of paper, 
differently expressed. Not long before his death Adam 
Smith told Dugald Stewart that he wrote with just as 
much difficulty then as when he first began. The Benedic- 
tine editor of Bossuet's works stated that his manuscripts 
were bleared over with such numerous interlineations that 
they were nearly illegible. Sterne was incessantly em- 
ployed for six months in perfecting one very diminutive 
volume. Herrick was a painstaking elaborator : with 
minute and curious care he polished and strengthened his 
work : " his airy facility, his seemingly spontaneous melo- 
dies, as with Shelley, were earned by conscious labor ; per- 
fect freedom was begotten of perfect art." It seems, no 
doubt, to many a reader of Macaulay's History, as if he 
wrote without effort, and as if the charms of his style 
were the gift of nature rather than the product of art, so 
spontaneously do they appear to flow from his pen. It 
was the general opinion of his literary friends that he 
9 



130 LIBRARY NOTES. 

wrote with great rapidity, and made few corrections in his 
manuscripts. On the contrary, we are told by his nephew 
and biographer, that he never allowed a sentence to pass 
until it was as good as he could make it, and would often 
re-write paragraphs and whole chapters that he might 
gain even a slight improvement in arrangement or expres- 
sion. After writing thus carefully, he corrected again 
remorselessly, and his manuscripts were covered with 
erasures. He paid equal attention to proof-sheets. " He 
could not rest until the lines were level to a hair's breadth, 
and the punctuation correct to a comma ; until every 
paragraph concluded with a telling sentence, and every 
sentence flowed like running water." To Napier, the ed- 
itor of The Edinburgh Review, he wrote from Calcutta : 
"At last I send you an article of interminable length 
about Lord Bacon. I never bestowed so much care on 
anything that I have written. There is not a sentence in 
the latter half of the article which has not been repeatedly 
recast." Carlyle, Miss Martineau says, erred on the side 
of fastidiousness. " Almost every word was altered, and 
revise followed revise." Giardini, when asked how long 
it would take to learn to play on the violin, answered, 
" Twelve hours a day for twenty years together." Biilow 
is reported to have said, " If I stop practice for one day, 
I notice it in my playing ; if I stop two days, my friends 
notice it ; if I stop three days, the public notices it." 
Leonardo da Vinci would walk the whole length of Milan 
that he might alter a single tint in his picture of the Last 
Supper. Titian, we are told, after laying his foundation 
with a few bold strokes, would turn the picture to the 
wall, and leave it there perhaps for months, turning it 
round again after a time to look at it carefully, and scan 
the parts as he would the face of his greatest enemy. If 
at this time any portion of it should appear to him to have 
been defective, he would set to work to correct it, applying 
remedies as a surgeon would apply them, cutting off ex- 



REWARDS. I31 

crescences here, superabundant flesh there, redressing an 
arm, adjusting or setting a limb, regardless of the pain 
which it might cause. In this way he would reduce the 
whole to a certain symmetry, put it aside, and return again 
a third or more times till the first quintessence had been 
covered over with its padding of flesh. Then came the 
finishing, which was done at as many more different paint- 
ings, to say nothing of the innumerable last touches — 
with his fingers as well as with his brush — of which he is 
said to have been particularly fond. It is a received 
opinion that Edmund Kean's acting was wholly sponta- 
neous and unstudied ; this is a mistake. A contemporary, 
writing of his earlier professional life, says, " He used to 
mope about for hours, walking miles and miles alone with 
his hands in his pockets, thinking intensely on his charac- 
ters. No one could get a word from him ; he studied and 
slaved beyond any actor I ever knew." Neither did he 
relax his labors when he had reached the highest pinnacle 
of fame. It is related of him, that when studying Maturin's 
Bertram, he shut himself up for two days to study the one 
line, " Bertram has kissed the child ! " It made one of 
those electrical effects which from their vividness were 
supposed to be merely impulsive. His wife said her hus- 
band would often stand up all night before a pier glass 
in his chamber, endeavoring to acquire the right facial 
expression for some new part. John Kemble's new read- 
ings of Hamlet were many and strange, and excited much 
comment. " The performance was eminently graceful, 
calm, deep-studied — during his life he wrote out the en- 
tire part forty times — but cold and unsympathetic." As 
to orators, the greatest of antiquity were not ashamed to 
confess the industry of the closet. Demosthenes gloried 
in the smell of the lamp ; and it is recorded of Cicero, 
that he not only so laboriously prepared his speeches, 
but even so minutely studied the effect of their delivery, 
that on one occasion, when he had to oppose Hortensius, 



I32 LIBRARY NOTES. 

the reiterated rehearsals of the night before so diminished 
his strength as almost to incapacitate him in the morning. 
Lord Erskine corrected and corrected his very eloquent 
orations, and Burke literally worried his printer into a 
complaint against the fatigue of his continual revises. 
Indeed, it is said, such was the fastidiousness of his in- 
dustry, that the proof-sheet not unfrequently exhibited a 
complete erasure of the original manuscript. Whitefield's 
eloquence was a natural gift improved by diligent study ; 
and Garrick said that each repetition of the same sermon 
showed a constant improvement, — as many as forty 
repetitions being required before the discourse reached 
its full perfection. " I composed," says Lord Brougham, 
" the peroration of my speech for the queen, in the Lords, 
after reading and repeating Demosthenes for three or 
four weeks, and I composed it twenty times over at least, 
and it certainly succeeded in a very extraordinary degree, 
and far above any merits of its own." He says that Ers- 
kine wrote down word for word the passage about the 
savage and his bundle of sticks. His mind having ac- 
quired a certain excitement and elevation, and received 
an impetus from the tone and quality of the matured and 
premeditated composition, retained that impetus, after 
the impelling cause had died away. Webster, it is said, 
was in the habit of writing and re-writing most of the 
fine passages of his senatorial and forensic speeches, and 
sometimes prepared them, in order that they might after- 
ward be introduced when occasion should offer. He was 
wont to say that the following passage in his speech upon 
President Jackson's protest, in May, 1834, had been 
changed by him twelve times, before he reduced it to a 
shape that entirely met his approval. Perhaps it is not 
surpassed, for poetical beauty, by anything that ever fell 
from his eloquent lips. Speaking of resistance by the 
United States of the aggressions of Great Britain, he said : 
" They raised their flag against a power, to which, for the 



REWARDS. I33 

purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome, in 
the height of her glory, is not to be compared. A power 
which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe 
with her possessions and military posts — whose morning 
drum-beat following the sun, and keeping company with 
the hours, circles the earth daily with one continuous and 
unbroken strain of the martial airs of England." 

As to compensation, it is stated that Goethe's works 
were not in his own time commercially successful. After 
his return from Italy, the edition of his collected works, 
which he had compared and revised with labor and with 
care,«old, as his publisher complained, only "very slowly." 
Coleridge gained little or no money by his writings. He 
says, " I question whether there ever existed a man of 
letters so utterly friendless, or so unconnected as I am 
with the dispensers of contemporary reputation, or the 
publishers in whose service they labor." When Newton 
lectured, a Lucasian professor, " so few went to hear him, 
that ofttimes he did, in a manner, for want of hearers, read 
to the walls." The Paradise Lost had a very limited sale, 
till, fifty years after its publication, it was brought into 
light by the criticisms of Addison. Campbell for years 
could not find a bookseller who would buy The Pleasures 
of Hope. In the first thirteen years after the publication 
of BoswelFs Life of Johnson, less than four thousand 
copies were sold. There were only forty-five copies of 
Hume's History sold in the first twelvemonth. Twelve 
years elapsed before the first five hundred copies of Em- 
erson's Nature were purchased by the public. Washing- 
ton Irving was nearly seventy years old before the sale of 
his works at home met the expenses of his simple life 
at Sunnyside. It has been related that while Madame 
Titiens was receiving an ovation for her singing of Kath- 
leen Mavourneen, the author of the song sat weeping in 
the audience, the poorest and obscurest man present. 
Willis, breakfasting at the Temple with a friend, met 



134 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Charles and Mary Lamb. He mentioned having bought 
a copy of Elia the last day he was in America, to send as 
a parting gift to one of the most lovely and talented 
women in his country. " What did you give for it ? " said 
Lamb. " About seven and six-pence." " Permit me to 
pay you that," said he ; and with the utmost earnestness 
he counted out the money upon the table. " I never yet 
wrote anything that would sell," he continued. " I am 
the publishers' ruin." 

Fortune, it has been truly said, has rarely condescended 
to be the companion of genius ; others find a hundred by- 
roads to her palace ; there is but one open, and that a 
very indifferent one, for men of letters. Cervantes, the 
immortal genius of Spain, is supposed to have wanted 
bread ; Le Sage was a victim of poverty all his life ; 
Camoens, the solitary pride of Portugal, deprived of the 
necessaries of life, perished in a hospital at Lisbon. The 
Portuguese, after his death, bestowed on the man of genius 
they had starved the appellation of Great. Vondel, the 
Dutch Shakespeare, to whom Milton was greatly indebted, 
after composing a number of popular tragedies, lived in 
great poverty, and died at ninety years of age ; then he 
had his coffin carried by fourteen poets, who, without his 
genius, probably partook of his wretchedness. The great 
Tasso was reduced to such a dilemma that he was obliged 
to borrow a crown from a friend to subsist through the 
week. He alludes to his dress in a pretty sonnet, which 
he addresses to his cat, entreating her to assist him, dur- 
ing the night, with the lustre of her eyes, having no can- 
dle to see to write his verses. One day Louis the Four- 
teenth asked Racine what there was new in the literary 
world. The poet answered that he had seen a melan- 
choly spectacle in the house of Corneille, whom he found 
dying, deprived even of a little broth. Spenser, the child 
of Fancy, languished out his life in misery. Lord Bur- 
leigh, it is said, prevented the queen giving him a hun- 



REWARDS. 135 

dred pounds, thinking the lowest clerk in his office a more 
deserving person. Sydenham, who devoted his life to a 
laborious version of Plato, died in a miserable spunging- 
house. " You," said Goldsmith to Bob Bryanton, " seem 
placed at the centre of fortune's wheel, and, let it re- 
volve ever so fast, are insensible to the motion. I seem 
to have been tied to the circumference, and whirled dis- 
agreeably round, as if on a whirligig Oh gods ! 

gods ! here in a garret, writing for bread, and expecting 
to be dunned for a milk-score." To another, about the 
same time, he wrote, " I have been some years struggling 
with a wretched being — with all that contempt that in- 
digence brings with it — with all those passions which 
make contempt insupportable. What, then, has a jail 
that is formidable ? I shall at least have the society 
of wretches, and such is to me true society." Cervantes 
planned and commenced Don Quixote in prison. John 
Bunyan wrote the first part, at least, of Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress in jail. Both of these immortal works are the de- 
light and solace of reading people wherever there is a 
literature. The latter is said to have been translated into 
a greater number of languages than any other book in 
the world, with two exceptions, the Bible and the Imita- 
tion of Christ. Sir James Harrington, author of Oceana, 
on pretense of treasonable practices, was put into con- 
finement, which lasted until he became deranged, when 
he was liberated. Sir Roger L'Estrange was tried and 
condemned to death, and lay in prison nearly four years ; 
constantly expecting to be led forth to execution. Ben 
Jonson, John Selden, Jeremy Taylor, and Edmund Waller 
were imprisoned. Sir Walter Raleigh, during his twelve 
years' imprisonment, wrote his best poems and his His- 
tory of the World, a work accounted vastly superior to 
all the English historical productions which had previous- 
ly appeared. "Written," says the historian Tytler, "in 
prison, during the quiet evening of a tempestuous life, we 



I36 LIBRARY NOTES. 

feel, in its perusal, that we are the companions of a su- 
perior mind, nursed in contemplation and chastened and 
improved by sorrow, in which the bitter recollection of 
injury and the asperity of resentment have passed away, 
leaving only the heavenly lesson, that all is vanity." Old 
George Wither wrote his Shepherd's Hunting during his 
first imprisonment. The superiority of intellectual pur- 
suits over the gratification of sense and all the malice of 
fortune, has never been more touchingly or finely illus- 
trated, it has been well said, than in this poem. 

"Can anything be so elegant," asks Emerson, "as to 
have few wants and serve them one's self ? It is more 
elegant to answer one's own needs than to be richly 
served; inelegant perhaps it may look to-day, and to a 

few, but it is an elegance forever and to all 

Parched corn, and a house with one apartment, that I may 
be free of all perturbations, that I may be serene and 
docile to what the mind shall speak, and girt and 
road-ready for the lowest mission of knowledge or good- 
will, is frugality for gods and heroes." Said Confu- 
cius, " With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and 
my bended arm for a pillow, — I have still joy in the 
midst of these things." " For my own private satisfac- 
tion," said Bishop Berkeley, " I had rather be master of 
my own time than wear a diadem." " I would rather," 
said Thoreau, " sit on a pumpkin and have it all to my- 
self, than to be Crowded on a velvet cushion If 

you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old 
clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but 
something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we 
should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty 
the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or 
sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, 
and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in 
old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of fowls, 
must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary 



REWARDS. 137 

ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, 
and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry 
and expansion ; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle 

and mortal coil It is desirable that a man be clad 

so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the 
dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and 
preparedly, that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like 
the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed 
without anxiety." 

" You see in my chamber," said Goethe, near the close 
of his life, " no sofa ; I sit always in my old wooden 
chay*, and never, till a few weeks ago, have permitted 
even a leaning place for my head to be added. If sur- 
rounded by tasteful furniture, my thoughts are arrested, 
and I am placed in an agreeable, but passive state. Un- 
less we are accustomed to them from early youth, splen- 
did chambers and elegant furniture had best be left to 
people who neither have nor can have any thoughts." 

Rogers, the banker poet, once said to Wordsworth, " If 
you would let me edit your poems, and give me leave to 
omit some half-dozen, and make a few trifling alterations, 
I would engage that you should be as popular a poet as 
any living." Wordsworth's answer is said to have been, 
" I am much obliged to you, Mr. Rogers ; I am a poor 
man, but I would rather remain as I am." 

Thomson solicited Burns to supply him with twenty or 
thirty songs for the musical work in which he was en- 
gaged, with an understanding distinctly specified, that 
the bard should receive a regular pecuniary remuneration 
for his contributions. With the first part of the proposal 
Burns instantly complied, but peremptorily rejected the 
last. " A.s to any remuneration, you may think my songs 
either above or below price ; for they shall absolutely be 
the one or the other. In the honest enthusiasm with 
which I embark in your undertaking, to talk of money, 
wages, fee, hire, etc., would be downright prostitution of 



138 LIBRARY NOTES. 

soul." Thomson, some time after, notwithstanding the 
prohibition, ventured to acknowledge his services by a 
small pecuniary present, which the poet with some diffi- 
culty restrained himself from returning. " I assure you, 
my dear sir," he wrote to the donor, " that you truly hurt 
me with your pecuniary parcel. It degrades me in my 
own eyes. However, to return it would savor of affecta- 
tion ; but as to any more traffic of that debtor and 
creditor kind, I swear by that honor which crowns the 
upright statue of Robert Burns' integrity — on the least 
motion of it, I will indignantly spurn the by-past transac- 
tion, and from that moment commence entire stranger to 
you ! Burns' character for generosity of sentiment and 
independence of mind will, I trust, long outlive any of 
his wants which the cold, unfeeling ore can supply; at 
least, I will take care that such a character he shall de- 
serve." His sensitive nature inclined him to reject the 
present, as proud old Sam Johnson threw away with in- 
dignation the new shoes which had been placed at his 
chamber door. " I ought not," says Emerson, " to allow 
any man, because he has broad lands, to feel that he is 
rich in my presence. I ought to make him feel that I can 
do without his riches, that I cannot Ipe bought, — neither 
by comfort, neither by pride, — and though I be utterly 
penniless, and receiving bread from him, that he is the 
poor man beside me." 

Isaac Disraeli, when a young man, was informed that a 
place in the establishment of a great merchant was pre- 
pared for him ; he replied that he had written and in- 
tended to publish a poem of considerable length against 
commerce, which was the corrupter of man; and he at 
once inclosed his poem to Dr. Johnson, who, however, 
was in his last illness, and was unable to read it. Cole- 
ridge, on being offered a half share in the Morning Post 
and Courier, with a prospect of two thousand pounds a 
year, announced that he would not give up country life, 



REWARDS. 139 

and the lazy reading of old folios, for two thousand times 
that income. " In short," he added, " beyond three hun- 
dred and fifty pounds a year, I regard money as a real 
evil." Professor Agassiz, when once invited to lecture, 
replied to the munificent lecture association that he was 
very sorry, but he was just then^ busy with some re- 
searches that left him no time to make money. There is 
a familiar story told of Marvell, who is said to have so 
greatly pleased Charles II. at a private interview, by his 
wit and agreeable conversation, that the latter dispatched 
the lord treasurer Danby to offer him a thousand pounds, 
witl>a promise of a lucrative place at court, which Mar- 
vell refused, notwithstanding he was immediately after- 
ward compelled to borrow a guinea of a friend. Just at 
the time when the English mind was agitated upon the 
subject of American taxation, and Goldsmith was most 
needy, an effort was made to bring him into the minis- 
terial ranks. Dr. Scott was sent to negotiate with the 
poet. "I found him," said Scott, "in a miserable suite of 
chambers in the Temple. I told him my authority : I told 
him I was empowered to pay most liberally for his exer- 
tions ; and, would you believe it ! he was so absurd as to 
say, ' I can earn as much as will supply my wants without 
writing for any party ; the assistance you offer is there- 
fore unnecessary to me;' and so I left him in his gar- 
ret ! " Sir John Hawkins one day met Goldsmith \ his 
lordship told him he had read his poem, The Traveller, 
and was much delighted with it ; that he was going lord 
lieutenant to Ireland, and that hearing that he was a na- 
tive of that country, he should be glad to do him any 
kindness. The honest poor man and sincere lover of 
literature replied that he " had a brother there, a clergy- 
man, that stood in need of help. As for myself, I have 
no dependence upon the promises of great men ; I look 
to the booksellers for support ; they are my best friends, 
and I am not inclined to forsake them for others," For 



140 LIBRARY NOTES. 

this frank expression of magnanimity and manly self- 
dependence, the pricked Hawkins, and the envious Bos- 
well, speaking of the incident afterward, called Goldsmith 
an " idiot." Some of Walter Scott's friends offered him, 
or rather proposed to offer him, enough of money, as was 
supposed, to enable him to arrange with his creditors. 
He paused for a moment ; and then recollecting his 
powers, said proudly, " No ! this right hand shall work 
it all off ! " Lady Blessington said to Willis, Disraeli 
and Dr. Beattie being present : " Moore went to Jamaica 
with a profitable appointment. The climate disagreed 
with him, and he returned home, leaving the business in 
the hands of a confidential clerk, who embezzled eight 
thousand pounds in the course of a few months and ab- 
sconded. Moore's misfortunes awakened a great sympa- 
thy among his friends. Lord Lansdowne was the first to 
offer his aid. He wrote to Moore, that for many years 
he had been in the habit of laying aside from his income 
eight thousand pounds, for the encouragement of the arts 
and literature, and that he should feel that it was well 
disposed of for that year if Moore would accept it, to free 
him from his 'difficulties. It was offered in the most del- 
icate and noble manner, but Moore declined it. The 
members of ' White's ' (mostly noblemen) called a meet- 
ing, and (not knowing the amount of the deficit) sub- 
scribed in one morning twenty-five thousand pounds, and 
wrote to the poet that they would cover the sum, what- 
ever it might be. This was declined. Longman and 
Murray then offered to pay it, and wait for their remu- 
neration from his works. He declined even this, and 
went to Passy with his family, where he economized and 
worked hard till it was canceled. At one time two dif- 
ferent counties of Ireland sent committees to him, to offer 
him a seat in Parliament ; and as he depended on his 
writings for a subsistence, offering him at the same time 
twelve hundred pounds a year while he continued to rep- 



REWARDS. 141 

resent them. Moore was deeply touched with it, and 
said no circumstance of his life had ever gratified him so 
much. He admitted that the honor they proposed him 
had been his most cherished ambition, but the necessity 
of receiving a pecuniary support at the same time was an 
insuperable obstacle. He could never enter Parliament 
with his hands tied, and his opinions and speech fettered, 
as they would be irresistibly in such circumstances." 
Southey was offered by Walter the editorship of The 
Times, but declined it, saying, " No emolument, however 
great, would induce me to give up a country life, and 
those* pursuits in literature to which the studies of so 
many years have been directed." " Will you be created 
a count ? a title is sometimes useful," said Louis Philippe 
to M. Guizot. The proffered honor was declined, and 
the king replied, " You are right ; your name alone is 
sufficient, and is a higher dignity." D'Alembert, when 
in receipt of but a limited income, — more than half of 
which he gave away in charity, — declined an invitation of 
Frederick the Great to reside at the court of Berlin. The 
Empress Catherine offered him the post of tutor or gov- 
ernor to the czarowitch, with an income of one hundred 
thousand livres, and on his refusal wrote : " I know that 
your refusal arises from your desire to cultivate your 
studies and your friendships in quiet. But this is of no 
consequence ; bring all your friends with you, and I 
promise you, that both you and they shall have every 
accommodation in my power." Still he refused ; the 
"powers and potentialities of the courts and royalty" be- 
ing insufficient to seduce his independence. Be'ranger, 
the " French Burns," the poet of the people, from 1820 
to the end of his life called " the real monarch of France," 
had the same proud spirit of independence. General 
Sebastiani, then minister of war, and dangerously ill, 
received one day a visit from Be'ranger. " Ah ! my dear 
friend," said the old soldier to the poet, " I am very ill. 



142 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Come, my dear Beranger, we must do something for our 
friends. I declare to you that I shall not die quietly if I 
leave you in poverty behind me. Madame de Praslin has 
a fortune of her own ; therefore it will not be doing any 
injustice to my children. Listen ; I have there in my 
bureau a few small savings, about two hundred thousand 
francs ; let us divide them. It is an old friend, an old 
soldier, who offers you this ; and I swear, on my cross of 
honor, that no one shall know the pleasure you will have 
done me in accepting the small present." The poet re- 
fused. Spinoza, at one time, we are informed, did not 
spend six sous a day, on an average, and did not drink 
more than a pint of wine in a month. " Nature is satis- 
fled with little," he used to say, " and when she is con- 
tent, I am so too." A good friend brought him one day 
a present of two thousand florins. The philosopher, " in 
the presence of his host, civilly excused himself from 
accepting the money, saying that he was in need of noth- 
ing, and that the possession of so much money would 
only serve to distract him from his studies and occupa- 
tions." 

Dr. Johnson contracted an inveterate dislike to sus- 
tained intellectual exertion, and wondered how any one 
could write except for money, and never, or very rarely, 
wrote from any more elevated impulse than the stern 
pressure of want. " Who will say," says Richard Cum- 
berland, " that Johnson himself would have been such a 
champion in literature, such a front-rank soldier in the 
fields of fame, if he had not been pressed into the service, 
and driven on to glory with the bayonet of sharp ne- 
cessity pointed at his back ? If fortune had turned him 
into a field of clover, he would have lain down and rolled 
in it. The mere manual labor of writing would not have 
allowed his lassitude and love of ease to have taken 
the pen out of the inkhorn, unless the cravings of hun- 
ger had reminded him that he must fill the sheet before 



REWARDS. 143 

he saw the table-cloth He would have put up 

prayers for early rising, and lain in bed all day, and with 
the most active resolutions possible, been the most in- 
dolent mortal living I have heard that illustrious 

scholar assert that he subsisted himself for a considerable 
space of time upon the scanty pittance of four-pence 
half-penny per day. How melancholy to reflect that his 
vast trunk and stimulating appetite were to be supported 
by what will barely feed the weaned infant ! " No won- 
der he so often screened himself when he ate, or, later in 
life, lost his temper with Mrs. Thrale when she made a 
jest of hunger ! 

It is related that soon after the publication of the Life 
of Savage, which was anonymous, Mr. Walter Harte, din- 
ing with Mr. Cave, the proprietor of The Gentleman's 
Magazine, at St. John's Gate, took occasion to speak very 
handsomely of the work. The next time Cave met Harte, 
he told him that he had made a man happy the other day 
at his home, by the encomiums he bestowed on Savage's 
Life. " How could that be ? " said Harte ; " none were 
present but you and I." Cave replied, " You might ob- 
serve I sent a plate of victuals behind the screen. There 
skulked the biographer, one Johnson, whose dress was so 
shabby that he durst not make his appearance. He over- 
heard our conversation ; and your applauding his perform- 
ance delighted him exceedingly." 

" Man," said Goethe, " recognizes and praises only that 
which he himself is capable of doing ; and those who by 
nature are mediocre have the trick of depreciating pro- 
ductions which, if they have faults, have also good points, 
so as to elevate the mediocre productions which they are 
fitted to praise." "While it is so undesirable that any 
man should receive what he has not examined, a far more 
frequent danger is that of flippant irreverence. Not all 
the heavens contain is obvious to the unassisted eye of 
the careless spectator. Few men are great, almost as few 



144 LIBRARY NOTES. 

able to appreciate greatness. The critics have written 
little upon the Iliad in all these ages which Alexander 
would have thought worth keeping with it in his golden 
box. Nor Shakespeare, nor Dante, nor Calderon, have 
as yet found a sufficient critic, though Coleridge and the 
Schlegels have lived since they did. Meantime," con- 
tinues Margaret Fuller, "it is safer to take off the hat 
and shout vivat ! to the conqueror, who may become a 
permanent sovereign, than to throw stones and mud from 
the gutter. The star shines, and that it is with no bor- 
rowed light, his foes are his voucher. And every planet 
is a portent to the world ; but whether for good or ill, 
only he can know who has science for many calculations. 
Not he who runs can read these books, or any books of 
any worth." 

Homer was called a plagiarist by some of the earlier 
critics, and was accused of having stolen from older poets 
all that was remarkable in the Iliad and Odyssey. Sopho- 
cles was brought to trial by his children as a lunatic. 
Socrates, considered as the wisest and the most moral of 
men, Cicero treated as an usurer, and Athenaeus as illit- 
erate. Plato was accused of envy, lying, avarice, rob- 
bery, incontinence, and impiety. Some of the old writers 
wrote to prove Aristotle vain, ambitious, and ignorant. 
Plato is said to have preferred the burning of all of the 
works of Democritus. Pliny and Seneca thought Virgil 
destitute of invention, and Quintilian was alike severe 
upon Seneca. It was a long time, says Seneca, that 
Democritus was taken for a madman, and before Soc- 
rates had any esteem in the world. How long was it 
before Cato could be understood ? Nay, he was affronted, 
contemned, and rejected ; and people never knew the 
value of him until they had lost him. " The Northern 
Highlanders," said Wilson, " do not admire Waverley, so 
I presume the Southern Highlanders despise Guy Man- 
nering. The Westmoreland peasants think Wordsworth 



REWARDS. 145 

a fool. In Borrowdale, Southey is not known to exist. 
I met ten men at Hawick who did not think Hogg a poet, 
and the whole city of Glasgow think me a madman. So 
much for the voice of the people being the voice of God." 
Goldsmith tells us, speaking of Waller's Ode on the 
Death of Cromwell, that English poetry was not then 
" quite harmonized : so that this, which would now be 
looked upon as a slovenly sort of versification, was in the 
times in which it was written almost a prodigy of har- 
mony." At the same time, after praising the harmony of 
the Rape of the Lock, he observes that the irregular 
measure at the opening of the Allegro and Penseroso 
" hurts our English ear." Gray " loved intellectual ease 
and luxury, and wished as a sort of Mahometan para- 
dise to ' lie on a sofa, and read eternal new romances of 
Mirivaux and Crebillon.' Yet all he could say of Thom- 
son's Castle of Indolence, when it was first published, 
was, that there were some good verses in it. Akenside, 
too, whom he was so well fitted to appreciate, he thought 
1 often obscure, and even unintelligible.' " Horace Wal- 
pole marveled at the dullness of people who can admire 
anything so stupidly extravagant and barbarous as the 
Divina Commedia. " The long-continued contempt for 
Bunyan and De Foe was merely an expression of the 
ordinary feeling of the cultivated classes toward any- 
thing which was identified with Grub Street ; but it is 
curious to observe the incapacity of such a man as John- 
son to understand Gray or Sterne, and the contempt 
which Walpole expressed for Johnson and Goldsmith, 
while he sincerely believed that the poems of Mason 
were destined to immortality." The poet Rogers tells 
us that Henry Mackenzie advised Burns to take for his 
model in song-writing Mrs. John Hunter ! Byron be- 
lieved that Rogers and Moore were the truest poets 
among his contemporaries ; that Pope was the first of all 
English, if not of all existing poets, and that Wordsworth 



I46 LIBRARY NOTES. 

was nothing but a namby-pamby driveler. De Quincey 
speaks of " Mr. Goethe " as an immoral and second-rate 
author, who owes his reputation chiefly to the fact of his 
long life and his position at the court of Weimar, and 
Charles Lamb expressed a decided preference of Mar- 
lowe's Dr. Faustus to Goethe's immortal Faust. Dr. 
Johnson's opinion of Milton's sonnets is pretty well 
known — " those soul-animating strains, alas ! too few," 
as Wordsworth estimated them. Hannah More won- 
dered that Milton could write " such poor sonnets." 
Johnson said, " Milton, madam, was a genius that could 
cut a Colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads 
upon cherry-stones." He attacked Swift on all occasions. 
He said, speaking of Gulliver's Travels, " When once you 
have thought of big men and little men, it is very easy to 
do all the rest." He called Gray " a dull fellow." " Sir, 
he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull every- 
where. He was dull in a new way, and that made many 
people call him great." Talking of Sterne, he said, 
" Nothing odd will last long. Tristram Shandy did not 
last." See how Horace Walpole disposes of some of the 
gods of literature. " Tiresome Tristram Shandy, of which 
I could never get through three volumes." " I have read 
Sheridan's Critic ; it appeared wondrously flat and old, 
and a poor imitation." He speaks of wading through 
Spenser's " allegories and drawling stanzas." Chaucer's 
Canterbury Tales, he said, are " a lump of mineral from 
which Dryden extracted all the gold, and converted it into 
beautiful medals." " Dante was extravagant, absurd, 
disgusting : in short, a Methodist parson in Bedlam." 
" Montaigne's Travels I have been reading; if I was tired 
of the Essays, what must one be of these ? What signi- 
fies what a man thought who never thought of anything 
but himself ? and what signifies what a man did who 
never did anything ? " " Boswell's book," he said, " is the 
story of a mountebank and his zany." Pepys, in his 



REWARDS. I47 

Diary, speaks of having bought "Hudibras, both parts, 
the book now in greatest fashion for drollery, though I 
cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies." Scali- 
ger called Montaigne " a bold ignoramus." Paley used 
to say that to read Tristram Shandy was the summum 
bonum of life. Goldsmith said its author was a " block- 
head." Goethe told a young Italian who asked him his 
opinion of Dante's great poem, that he thought the In- 
ferno abominable, the Purgatorio dubious, and the Para- 
diso tiresome. Coleridge, talking of Goethe's Faust, 
said, " There is no whole in the poem • the scenes are 
mere magic-lantern pictures, and a large part of the work 
is to me very flat. Moreover, much of it is vulgar, licen- 
tious, and blasphemous." " Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, 
is, I think," says Southey, "the clumsiest attempt at Ger- 
man sublimity I ever saw." Johnson told Anna Seward 
that " he would hang a dog that read the Lycidas of Mil- 
ton twice." Waller wrote of Paradise Lost on its first 
appearance, "The old blind school-master, John Milton, 
hath published a tedious poem on the fall of man ; if its 
length be not considered a merit, it has no other." Cur- 
ran declared Paradise Lost to be the " worst poem in the 
language." When Harvey's book on the circulation of 
the blood came out, " he fell mightily in his practice. It 
was believed by the vulgar that he was crack-brained, and 
all the physicians were against him." Who has forgotten 
the fierce attack of the Quarterly Review on Jane Eyre, 
in which the unknown author, who was a clergyman's 
daughter, is pronounced " a person who, with great mental 
powers, combines a total ignorance of society, a great 
coarseness of taste, and a heathenish doctrine of re- 
ligion " ? " If we ascribe the book to a woman at all," 
continues the keen-sighted critic, " we have no alternative 
but to ascribe it to one who has, for some sufficient rea- 
son, forfeited the society of her own sex." Schiller's 
intimate friends decided against the Indian Death Song, 



I48 LIBRARY NOTES. 

which Goethe afterward pronounced one of his best 
poems. When Andersen published his Wonder Stories 
told for Children, which fixed his place in literature and 
in popular affection, the reviewers advised him to waste 
no more time over such work ; and he said, " I would will- 
ingly have discontinued writing them, but they forced 
themselves from me." Warren says that the first chapter 
of the Diary of a Late Physician — the Early Struggles, — 
was offered by him successively to the conductors of three 
leading London magazines, and rejected, as "unsuitable 
for their pages," and " not likely to interest the public." 
Scott tells us that one of his nearest friends predicted the 
failure of Waverley. Herder, one of the most compre- 
hensive thinkers and versatile authors of Germany, ad- 
jured Goethe not to take so unpromising a subject as 
Faust. Hume tried to dissuade Robertson from writing 
the History of Charles V. Montesquieu, upon the com- 
pletion of The Spirit of Laws, which had cost him twenty 
years of labor, and which ran through twenty-two editions 
in less than as many months after its publication, sub- 
mitted the manuscript to Helvetius and Saurin, who re- 
turned it with the advice not to spoil a great reputation 
by publishing it. Wordsworth told Robinson that before 
his ballads were published, Tobin implored him to leave 
out We are Seven, as a poem that would damn the book. 
It turned out to be one of the most popular. That charm- 
ing and once popular Scottish story, The Annals of the 
Parish, by John Gait, was written ten or twelve years be- 
fore the date of its publication, and anterior to the ap- 
pearance of Waverley and Guy Mannering, and was re- 
jected by the publishers of those works, with the assur- 
ance that a novel or work of fiction entirely Scottish 
would not take with the public. St. Pierre submitted his 
delightful tale, Paul and Virginia, to the criticisms of a 
circle of his learned friends. They told him that it was 
a failure ; that to publish it would be a piece of foolish- 



REWARDS. I49 

ness ; that nobody would read it. St. Pierre appealed 
from his learned critics to his unlearned but sympathetic 
and sensible housekeeper. He read — she listened, ad- 
mired, and wept. He accepted her verdict, and will be 
remembered by one little story longer than his contem- 
poraries by their weary tomes. Moliere made use of a 
person of the same class to criticise his plays. " I re- 
member," says Boileau, "his pointing out to me several 
times an old servant that he had, to whom he told me he 
sometimes read his comedies, and he assured me that 
when the humorous passages did not strike her, he al- 
tered them, because he had frequently proved that such 
passages did not take upon the stage." 

It would be curious to know how much chance or ac- 
cident has had to do with even the best of the produc- 
tions of literature. Wordsworth, in a conversation with 
one of his friends, gave an account of the origin of the 
Ancient Mariner. It was written in Devonshire, where 
he and Coleridge were together. It was intended for 
the Monthly Magazine, and was to pay the expenses of 
a journey. It was to have been a joint work, but Words- 
worth left the execution to Coleridge, after suggesting 
much of the plan. The idea of the crime was suggested 
by a book of travels, in which the superstition of the sail- 
ors with regard to the albatross is mentioned. Mark 
Lemon, it is said, loved to tell an anecdote which related 
to the period when Hood became a contributor to Punch. 
Looking over his letters one morning, he opened an en- 
velope inclosing a poem which the writer said had been 
rejected by three contemporaries. If not thought availa- 
ble for Punch, he begged the editor, whom he knew but 
slightly, to consign it to the waste-paper basket, as the 
writer was " sick at the sight of it." The poem was 
signed " Tom Hood," and the lines were entitled " The 
Song of the Shirt." The work was altogether different 
from anything that had ever appeared in Punch, and was 



150 LIBRARY NOTES. 

considered so much out of keeping with the spirit of the 
periodical that at the weekly meeting its publication was 
opposed by several members of the staff. Lemon was so 
firmly impressed, not only with the beauty of the work, but 
with its suitableness, that he stood by his first decision 
and published it. The Song of the Shirt trebled the sale 
of the paper, and created a profound sensation through- 
out Great Britain. Scott told Ticknor that he once trav- 
eled with Campbell in a stage-coach alone, and that, to 
beguile the time, they talked of poetry and began to re- 
peat some. At last Scott asked Campbell for something 
of his own, and he said there was one thing he had writ- 
ten but never printed that was full of " drums and trum- 
pets and blunderbusses and thunder," and he didn't 
know if there was anything good in it. And then he 
repeated Hohenlinden. Scott listened with the greatest 
interest, and when he had finished, broke out, " But do 
you know that 's devilish fine ; why it 's the finest thing 
you ever wrote, and it must be printed ! " Scott told 
Leslie that he had known a laboring man who was with 
Burns when he turned up the mouse with his plow. 
Burns' first impulse was to kill it, but checking himself, 
as his eye followed the little creature, he said, " I '11 make 
that mouse immortal ! " 

" One meets now and then with polished men," says 
Emerson, "who know everything, have tried everything, 
can do everything, and are quite superior to letters and 
science. What could they not, if only they would ? " 
Wrote Byron : — 

" Many are poets who have never penned 

Their inspiration, and perchance the best ; 

They felt, and loved, and died, but would not lend 
Their thoughts to meaner things ; they compressed 

The god within them, and rejoined the stars 
Unlaureled upon earth." 

" On my walk with Lamb," notes Robinson, " he spoke 



REWARDS. 15I 

with enthusiasm of Manning, declaring that he is the 
most wonderful man he ever knew, more extraordinary 
than Wordsworth or Coleridge. Yet he does nothing. 
He has traveled even in China, and has been by land 
from India through Thibet, yet, as far as is known, he 
has written nothing." " My father," said Charles Kings- 
ley, " was a magnificent man in body and mind, and was 
said to possess every talent except that of using his tal- 
ents." Dr. Johnson lamented that " those who are most 
capable of improving mankind very frequently neglect to 
communicate their knowledge ; either because it is more 
pleasing to gather ideas than to impart them, or because 
to minds naturally great, few things appear of so much 
importance as to deserve the notice of the public." 
" Great constitutions," says Sir Thomas Browne, " and 
such as are constellated unto knowledge, do nothing till 
they outdo all ; they come short of themselves, if they go 
not beyond others, and must not sit down under the de- 
gree of worthies. God expects no lustre from the minor 
stars ; but if the sun should not illuminate all, it were a 
sin in nature." Rogers said of Sydney Smith (of whose 
death he had just heard), in answer to the question, 
" How came it that he did not publicly show his pow- 
ers ? " " He had too fastidious a taste, and too high an 
idea of what ought to be." Disappointment is often felt 
and sometimes expressed concerning Coleridge, by those 
who hear so much of his extraordinary intellect. How 
could he have done more ? His was one of those great, 
homeless souls which fly between heaven and earth ; his 
language was only partly understood in this world, if 
wholly in another. His best utterances were but inco- 
herencies to the human ears that heard them. Stupid 
John Chester understood them as well as any. 

"Vast objects of remote altitude," says Landor, "must 
be looked at a long while before they are ascertained. 
Ages are the telescope tubes that must be lengthened out 



152 LIBRARY NOTES. 

for Shakespeare ; and generations of men serve but as 
single witnesses to his claims." " Shakespeare," said 
Coleridge, " is of no age — nor, I may add, of any re- 
ligion, or party, or profession. The body and substance 
of his works came out of the unfathomable depths of his 
own oceanic mind ; his observation and reading supplied 
him with the drapery of his figures." " The sand heaped 
by one flood," says Dr. Johnson, "is scattered by an- 
other ; but the rock always continues in its place. The 
stream of time, which is continually washing the disso- 
luble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by 
the adamant of Shakespeare." " Milton is not," says 
De Quincey, " an author amongst authors, not a poet 
amongst poets, but a power amongst powers ; and the 
Paradise Lost is not a book amongst books, not a poem 
amongst poems, but a central force amongst forces." 
Landor, in his Imaginary Conversations, makes Marvell 
thus to address Marten : " Hast thou not sat convivially 
with Oliver Cromwell ? Hast thou not conversed famil- 
iarly with the only man greater than he, John Milton ? 
One was ambitious of perishable power, the other of im- 
perishable glory ; both have attained their aim." Hazlitt 
and Coleridge being together, some comparison was intro- 
duced between Shakespeare and Milton. Coleridge said 
"he hardly knew which to prefer. Shakespeare seemed 
to him a mere stripling in the art ; he was as tall and as 
strong, with infinitely more activity than Milton, but he 
never appeared to have come to man's estate ; or if he 
had, he would not have been a man, but a monster." 
" A rib of Shakespeare," said Landor, " would have made 
a Milton ; the same portion of Milton, all poets born ever 
since." Said Goethe, " Would you see Shakespeare's 
intellect unfettered, read Troilus and Cressida, and see 
how he uses the materials of the Iliad in his fashion." 
Said Coleridge, " Compare Nestor, Ajax, Achilles, etc., 
in the Troilus and Cressida of Shakespeare, with their 



REWARDS. 153 

namesakes in the Iliad. The old heroes seem all to have 
been at school ever since." " It was really Voltaire," 
said Goethe, "who excited such minds as Diderot, 
D'Alembert, and Beaumarchais ; for to be somewhat near 
him a man needed to be much, and could take no holi- 
days." "To have seen such a man as Dr. Johnson," 
said Dr. Campbell, " was a thing to talk of a century 
hence." " Nature," said Heine, "wanted to see how she 
looked, and she created Goethe." "Were Byron now 
alive, and Burns," said Hawthorne, " the first would come 
from his ancestral abbey, flinging aside, although unwill- 
ingly, the inherited honors of a thousand years, to take 
the arm of the mighty peasant who grew immortal while 
he stooped behind his plow." 

Generally, thought Goethe, the personal character of 
the writer influences the public, rather than his talents as 
an artist. Napoleon said of Corneille, " If he were living 
now, I would make him a prince," yet he never read him. 
" I have often been amused at thinking," says Landor, 
" in what estimation the greatest of mankind were holden 
by their contemporaries. Not even the most sagacious 
and prudent one could discover much of them, or could 
prognosticate their future course in the infinity of space ! 
Men like ourselves are permitted to stand near, and in- 
deed in the very presence of Milton : what do they see ? 
dark clothes, gray hair, and sightless eyes ! Other men 
have better things : other men, therefore, are nobler ! 
The stars themselves are only bright by distance ; go 
close, and all is earthy." " There is," says Emerson, 
" somewhat touching in the madness with which the pass- 
ing age mischooses the object on which all candles shine, 
and all eyes are turned ; the care with which it registers 
everything touching Queen Elizabeth, and King James, 
and the Essexes, Leicesters, Burleighs, and Buckinghams ; 
and lets pass without a single valuable note the founder of 
another dynasty, which alone will cause the Tudor dynasty 



154 LIBRARY NOTES. 

to be remembered, — the man who carries the Saxon 
race in him by the inspiration which feeds him, and on 
whose thoughts the foremost people of the world are now 
for some ages to be nourished, and minds to receive this 
and not another bias. A popular player, — nobody sus- 
pected he was the poet of the human race ; and the secret 
was kept as faithfully from poets and intellectual men, 
as from courtiers and frivolous people. Bacon, who took 
the inventory of the human understanding for his times 
never mentioned his name. Ben Jonson, though we have 
strained his few words of regard and panegyric, had no 
suspicion of the elastic fame whose first vibrations he was 
attempting. He no doubt thought the praise he has con- 
ceded to him generous, and esteemed himself, out of all 
question, the better poet of the two." " The people of 
Gascony, who knew Montaigne well," says the biographer 
of the great essayist, " thought it very droll to see him in 
print. He had to pay printers and publishers in Guienne ; 
elsewhere they were eager to buy him." Horace Walpole 
heard a sight-seer, on being shown the bows and arrows 
in the armory at Strawberry Hill, ask the housekeeper, 
" Pray, does Mr. Walpole shoot ? " One of his titled 
neighbors told him, that, having some company with her, 
one of them had been to see Strawberry. " Pray," said 
another, " who is that Mr. Walpole ? " " Lord ! " cried a 
third, " don't you know the great epicure, Mr. Walpole ? " 
" Pho ! " cried the first, " great epicure ! you mean the 
antiquarian." The only tradition a visitor could gather 
in Pope's garden at Twickenham was that a fine cedar 
was planted there by a famous man a long time ago. An 
elderly, well-to-do inhabitant of Beaconsfield, of whom the 
same person inquired where Burke had lived, made an- 
swer : " Pray, sir, was he a poet ? " During a pilgrimage 
which we are told Rogers and his friend Maltby made to 
Gerrard Street, Soho, to discover the house once occupied 
by Dryden, they came upon a house agent, who, scenting 



REWARDS. 155 

a job, eagerly responded: " Dryden — Mr. Dryden — is 
he behindhand with his rent ? " There is a story of an 
American who lost his way in the vain attempt to discover 
the residence of Wordsworth. Meeting an old woman in 
a scarlet cloak who was gathering sticks, he asked her the 
way to Rydal Mount. She could not tell him. "Not 
know," said the American, "the house of the great Words- 
worth ? " " No } but what was he great in ? Was he a 
preacher or a doctor ? " " Greater than any preacher or 
doctor — he is a poet." " Oh, the poet!" she replied; 
" and why did you not tell me that before ? I know who 
you mean now. I often meet him in the woods, jabbering 
his pottery (poetry) to hisself. But I 'm not afraid of 
him. He 's quite harmless, and almost as sensible as you 
or me." A Prussian staff-officer was quartered in Goethe's 
house after Jena. This officer, being afterward much in- 
terrogated by the curious as to his impressions of the 
great man, replied "that he had thoroughly tested the 
fellow and found that he had nothing but nonsense in his 
head ! " Rogers told Leslie that when the Pleasures of 
Memory was first published, one of those busy gentlemen, 
who are vain of knowing everybody, came up to him at a 

party, and said, " Lady is dying to be introduced to 

the author of the Pleasures of Memory." " Pray, let her 
live," said Rogers, and with difficulty they made their way 
through the crowd to the lady. " Mr. Rogers, madam, 
author of the Pleasures of Memory." " Pleasures of 
what ? " "I felt for my friend," said Rogers. 

No doubt the most genuine and grateful rewards which 
authors have received were those which came to them as 
surprises, or in overheard responses, unbidden and nat- 
ural, from the common heart of humanity. Mrs. Brod- 
erip reports of her father's pleasure in the immense 
popularity of his Song of the Shirt, that " what delighted 
and yet touched him most deeply was, that the poor 
creatures to whose sorrows and sufferings he had given 



156 LIBRARY NOTES. 

such eloquent voice, seemed to adopt its words as their 
own, by singing them about the streets to a rude air of 
their own adaptation." Bernard Barton ends a letter de- 
scriptive of an endearing girl's village funeral, with telling 
how " the clergyman, at the close of the service, stated 
that, by her wish, a little hymn, which was a great favor- 
ite with her, would be sung beside her open grave, by 
the school-children — some five-and-twenty little things — 
whose eyes and cheeks were red with crying. ' I thought 
they could never have found tongues, poor things ; but 
once set off, they sang like a little band of cherubs. 
What added to the effect of it, to me, was that it was a 
little almost forgotten hymn of my own, written years ago, 
which no one present, but myself, was at all aware of.' " 
Goldsmith, in his college career, wrote street ballads, to 
save himself from starving, sold them for five shillings 
apiece, and stole out of college at night to hear them 
sung. "Happy night to him, worth all the dreary days ! '' 
exclaims his biographer, Forster. " Hidden by some 
dusky wall, or creeping within darkling shadows of the 
ill-lighted streets, this poor, neglected sizer watched, 
waited, lingered there, for the only effort of his life which 
had not wholly failed. Few and dull, perhaps, the beg- 
gar's audience at first, but more thronging, eager, and 
delighted, as he shouted forth his newly-gotten ware. 
Cracked enough, I doubt not, were those ballad-singing 
tones ; very harsh, extremely discordant, and passing 
from loud to low without meaning or melody ; but not the 
less did the sweetest music which this earth affords fall 
with them on the ear of Goldsmith." 



VI. 
LIMITS. 

Minds, like some seed-plants, delight in sporting ; 
there is great variety in thinking, but the few great ideas 
remain the same. They are constantly reappearing in 
all ages and in all literatures, modified by new circum- 
stances and new uses ; though in new dresses, they are 
still the old originals. Like the virtues, they have great 
and endless services to perform in this world. Now they 
appear in philosophy, now in fiction ; the moralist uses 
them, and the buffoon ; dissociate them, analyze them, 
strip them of their innumerable dresses, and they are rec- 
ognized and identified — the same from the foundation 
and forever. If a discriminating general reader for forty 
years had noted their continual reappearance in the tons 
of books he has perused upon all subjects, he would be 
astonished at their varied and multiplied uses. Thinkers 
he would perhaps find more numerous than thoughts ; 
yet of the former how few. The original thought of one 
age diffuses itself through the next, and expires in com- 
monplace — to be born again when occasion necessitates 
and God wills. At each birth it is a new creation — to 
the brain it springs from and to the creatures it is to en- 
lighten and serve. If the writer or speaker could know 
how often it has done even hack-service in the ages 
before him, he would repentantly blot it out, or choke in 
its utterance. In the unpleasant discovery, that indis- 
pensable and inspiring quality, self-conceit, would suffer a 
wound beyond healing. 

" The number of those writers who can, with any just- 



I58 LIBRARY NOTES. 

ness of expression," says Melmoth, " be termed thinking 
authors, would not form a very copious library, though 
one were to take in all of that kind which both ancient 
and modern times have produced. Epicurus, we are told, 
left behind him three hundred volumes of his own works, 
wherein he had not inserted a single quotation ; and we 
have it upon the authority of Varro's own works, that he 
himself composed four hundred and ninety books. Sen- 
eca assures us that Didymus, the grammarian, wrote no 
less than four thousand ; but Origen, it seems, was yet 
more prolific, and extended his performances even to six 
thousand treatises. It is obvious to imagine with what 
sort of materials the productions of such expeditious 
workmen were wrought up : sound thought and well- 
matured reflections could have no share, we may be sure, 
in these hasty performances. Thus are books multiplied, 
whilst authors are scarce ; and so much easier is it to 
write than to think." " The same man," said Publius 
Syrus, " can rarely say a great deal and say it to the pur- 
pose." 

To ridicule the pervading absence of thought in com- 
mon conversation, the author of Lothair makes Pinto 
exclaim, " English is an expressive language, but not 
difficult to master. Its range is limited. It consists, as 
far as I observe, of four words : ' nice,' ' jolly,' ' charm- 
ing,' and 'bore;' and some grammarians add, 'fond.' " 

Proverbs, old as they are, seem always new, and are 
always smartly uttered. Sancho Panza is but one of an 
immortal type, and the proverbs and maxims he was al- 
ways using are older than the pyramids — as old as 
spoken language. " The language of Spain," says Bul- 
wer, in Caxtoniana, " is essentially a language of prov- 
erbs. In proverbs, lovers woo ; in proverbs, politicians 
argue ; in proverbs, you make your bargain with your 
landlady or hold a conference with your muleteer. The 
language of Spain is built upon those diminutive relics of 



LIMITS. 



159 



a wisdom that may have existed before the Deluge, as 
the town of Berlin is built upon strata amassed, in the 
process of ages, by the animalcules that dwell in their 
pores." Aristotle was so struck by the condensed wis- 
dom of proverbial sayings, that he supposed them to be 
the wrecks of an ancient philosophy saved from the ruin 
in which the rest of the system had been lost by their 
eloquence and shortness. Pascal conceived that every 
possible maxim of conduct existed in the world, though 
no individual can be conversant with the entire series. 
" There is a certain list of vices committed in all ages, 
and declaimed against by all authors, which," says Sir 
Thomas Browne, " will last as long as human nature ; 
which, digested into commonplaces, may serve for any 
theme, and never be out of date until doomsday." A 
proverb Lord John Russell has defined to be " the wis- 
dom of the many in the wit of one." "The various 
humors of mankind," says the elder Disraeli, "in the 
mutability of human affairs, has given birth to every spe- 
cies ; and men were wise, or merry, or satirical, and 
mourned or rejoiced in proverbs. Nations held an uni- 
versal intercourse of proverbs, from the eastern to the 
western world ; for we discover among those which ap- 
pear strictly national many which are common to them 
all. Of our own familiar ones several may be tracked 
among the snows of the Latins and the Greeks, and have 
sometimes been drawn from The Mines of the East ; like 
decayed families which remain in obscurity, they may 
boast of a high lineal descent whenever they recover 
their lost title-deeds. The vulgar proverb, ' To carry 
coals to Newcastle,' local and idiomatic as it appears, 
however, has been borrowed and applied by ourselves ; it 
may be found among the Persians ; in the Bustan of 
Saadi, we have ' To carry pepper to Hindostan ; ' among 
the Hebrews, ' To carry oil to a city of olives ; ' a similar 
proverb occurs in Greek; and in Galland's Maxims of 



l60 LIBRARY NOTES. 

the East we may discover how many of the most common 
proverbs among us, as well as some of Joe Miller's jests, 
are of Oriental origin. The resemblance of certain prov- 
erbs in different nations must, however, be often ascribed 
to the identity of human nature ; similar situations and 
similar objects have unquestionably made men think and 
act and express themselves alike. All nations are par- 
allels of each other. Hence all collectors of proverbs 
complain of the difficulty of separating their own national 
proverbs from those which had crept into the language 
from others, particularly when nations have held much 
intercourse together. We have a copious collection of 
Scottish proverbs by Kelly ; but this learned man was 
mortified at discovering that many, which he had long be- 
lieved to have been genuine Scottish, were not only Eng- 
lish, but French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and Greek ones ; 
many of his Scottish proverbs are almost literally ex- 
pressed among the fragments of remote antiquity. It 
would have surprised him further had he been aware that 
his Greek originals were themselves but copies, and 
might have been found in D'Herbelot, Erpenius, and Go- 
lius, and in many Asiatic works, which have been more 
recently introduced to the enlarged knowledge of the Eu- 
ropean student, who formerly found his most extended 
researches limited by Hellenistic lore." 

Perhaps the proverb from the apostolical writings in 
most frequent circulation, is the one which St. Paul has 
adopted from Menander, and which, as Dean Alford sug- 
gests, may have become, in the days of the apostle, a cur- 
rent commonplace : " Evil communications corrupt good 
manners." 

" What stories are new ? " asks Thackeray. " All types 
of all characters march through all fables." " Will it be 
believed," says Max Miiller, in his essay On the Migra- 
tion of Fables, " that we, in this Christian country, and 
in the nineteenth century, teach our children the first, the 



LIMITS. l6l 

most important lessons of worldly wisdom, nay, of a more 
than worldly wisdom, from books borrowed from Bud- 
dhists and Brahmans, from heretics and idolaters, and that 
wise words, spoken a thousand, nay, two thousand years 
ago, in a lonely village of India, like precious seed scat- 
tered broadcast all over the world, still bear fruit a hun- 
dred and a thousand fold in that soil which is the most 
precious before God and man, the soul of a child? No 
lawgiver, no philosopher has made his influence felt so 
widely, so deeply, and so permanently as the author of 
these children's fables. But who was he ? We do not 
know. His name, like the name of many a benefactor of 
the human race, is forgotten." 

"Our obligations to genius are the greater," says a 
British essayist, " because we are seldom able to trace 
them. We cannot mount up to the sources from which 
we derive the ideas that make us what we are. Few of 
my readers may have ever read Chaucer ; fewer still the 
Principia of Newton. Yet how much poorer the minds 
of all my readers would be if Chaucer and Newton had 
never written ! All the genius of the past is in the at- 
mosphere we breathe at present." 

The author of The Eclipse of Faith, in one of his in- 
tellectual visions, saw suddenly expunged — " remorse- 
lessly expunged" — from literature "every text, every 
phrase, which had been quoted from the Bible, not only 
in the books of devotion and theology, but in those of 
poetry and fiction. " Never before," he says, " had I 
any adequate idea of the extent to which the Bible had 
moulded the intellectual and moral life of the last eight- 
een centuries, nor how intimately it had interfused itself 
with the habits of thought and modes of expression ; 
nor how naturally and extensively its comprehensive im- 
agery and language had been introduced into human 
writings, and most of all where there had been most of 
genius. A vast portion of literature became instantly 
ii 



l62 LIBRARY NOTES. 

worthless, and was transformed into so much waste paper. 
It was almost impossible to look into any book of merit, 
and read ten pages together, without coming to some pro- 
voking erasures and mutilations, which made whole pas- 
sages perfectly unintelligible. Many of the sweetest pas- 
sages of Shakespeare were converted into unmeaning 
nonsense, from the absence of those words which his 
own all but divine genius had appropriated from a still 
diviner source. As to Milton, he was nearly ruined, as 
might naturally be supposed. Walter Scott's novels were 
filled with lacunae. I hoped it might be otherwise with 
the philosophers, and so it was ; but even here it was 
curious to see what strange ravages the visitation had 
wrought. Some of the most beautiful and comprehensive 
of Bacon's Aphorisms were reduced to enigmatical non- 
sense." 

A scholarly article upon Homeric Characters in and 
out of Homer, published in The London Quarterly, 1857, 
opens with this passage : " To one only among the count- 
less millions of human beings has it been given to draw 
characters, by the strength of his own individual hand, 
in lines of such force and vigor that they have become 
from his day to our own the common inheritance of civil- 
ized man. That one is Homer. Ever since his time, 
besides finding his way even into the impenetrable East, 
he has found literary capital and available stock in trade 
for reciters and hearers, for authors and readers of all 
times and of all places within the limits of the western 
world. Like the sun, which furnishes with its light the 
courts and alleys of London, while himself unseen by 
their inhabitants, he has supplied with the illumination 
of his ideas millions of minds never brought into direct 
contact with his works, and even millions hardly aware 
of his existence." 

One of the most eminent platform orators of the time 
has treated the habit of borrowing, in literature, in a 



LIMITS. 163 

most interesting manner. "Take," he said, "the stories 
of Shakespeare, who has, perhaps, written his forty-odd 
plays. Some are historical. The rest, two thirds of 
them, he did not stop to invent, but he found them. 
These he clutched, ready-made to his hand, from the Ital- 
ian novelists, who had taken them before from the East. 
Cinderella and her Slipper is older than all history, like 
half a dozen other baby legends. The annals of the 
world do not go back far enough to tell us from where 
they first came. Bulwer borrowed the incidents of his 
Roman stories from legends of a thousand years before. 
Indeed, Dunloch, who has grouped the history of the 
novels of all Europe into one essay, says that in the na- 
tions of modern Europe there have been two hundred 
and fifty or three hundred distinct stories. He says at 
least two hundred of these may be traced, before Chris- 
tianity, to the other side of the Black Sea. Even our 
newspaper jokes are enjoying a very respectable old age. 
Take Maria Edgeworth's essay on Irish bulls and the 
laughable mistakes of the Irish. The tale which Maria 
Edgeworth or her father thought the best is that famous 
story of a man writing a letter as follows : ' My dear 
friend, I would write you more in detail, more minutely, if 
there was not an impudent fellow looking over my shoul- 
der reading every word.' (' No, you lie ; I 've not read a 
word you have written ! ') This is an Irish bull, still it 
is a very old one. It is only two hundred and fifty years 
older than the New Testament. Horace Walpole dis- 
sented from Richard Lovell Edgeworth, and thought the 
other Irish bull was the best — of the man who said, ' I 
would have been a very handsome man, but they changed 
me in the cradle.' That comes from Don Quixote, and 
is Spanish ; but Cervantes borrowed it from the Greek in 
the fourth century, and the Greeks stole it from the Egyp- 
tians hundreds of years back. There is one story which 
it is said Washington has related of a man who went into 



1 64 LIBRARY NOTES. 

an inn and asked for a glass of drink from the landlord, 
who pushed forward a wine-glass about half the usual 
size. The landlord said, 'That glass out of which you 
are drinking is forty years old.' ' Well,' said the thirsty 
traveler, contemplating its minute proportions, ' I think 
it is the smallest thing of its age I ever saw.' [The same 
story is told of Foote. Dining while in Paris with Lord 
Stormont, that thrifty Scotch peer, then ambassador, as 
usual produced his wine in the smallest of decanters, and 
dispensed it in the smallest of glasses, enlarging all the 
time on its exquisite growth and enormous age. " It is 
very little of its age," said Foote, holding up his diminu- 
tive glass.] That story as told is given as a story of 
Athens three hundred and seventy-five years before Christ 
was born. Why, all these Irish bulls are Greek — every 
one of them. Take the Irishman who carried around a 
brick as a specimen of the house he had to sell ; take 
the Irishman who shut his eyes and looked into the glass 
to see how he would look when he was dead ; take the 
Irishman that bought a crow, alleging that crows were 
reported to live two hundred years, and he meant to set 
out and try it ; take the Irishman that met a friend who 
said to him, ' Why, sir, I heard you were dead.' ' Well,' 
says the man, ' I suppose you see I am not.' ' Oh, no,' 
says he, ' I would believe the man who told me a great 
deal quicker than I would you.' Well, these are all 
Greek. A score or more of them, of the parallel char- 
acter, come from Athens." 

The critics and scholiasts would have us believe that 
" we have no very credible account of Rome or the Ro- 
mans for more than four hundred years after the founda- 
tion of the city ; and that the first book of Livy, contain- 
ing the regal period, can lay claim, when severely tested, 
to no higher authority than Lord Macaulay's Lays. Livy 
states that whatever records existed prior to the burning 
of Rome by the Gauls — three hundred and sixty-five 



LIMITS 165 

years after its foundation — were then burnt or lost. We 
are left, therefore, in the most embarrassing uncertainty 
whether Tarquin outraged Lucretia ; or Brutus shammed 
idiotcy, and condemned his sons to death; or Mutius 
Scasvola thrust his hand into the fire ; or Curtius jumped 
into the gulf — if there was one ; or Clcelia swam the 
Tiber ; or Codes defended a bridge against an army. We 
could fill pages with skeptical doubts of scholiasts, who 
would fain deprive Diogenes of his lantern and his tub, 
y£sop of his hump, Sappho of her leap, Rhodes of its 
Colossus, and Dionysius the First of his ear ; nay, who 
pretend that Cadmus did not come from Phoenicia, that 
Belisarius was not blind, that Portia did not swallow 
burning coals, and that Dionysius the Second never kept 
a school at Corinth. Modern chemists have been unable 
to discover how Hannibal could have leveled rocks, or 
Cleopatra dissolved pearls with vinegar. A German ped- 
ant has actually ventured to question the purity of Lu- 
cretia." 

Hayward (translator of Faust), in his article on Pearls 
and Mock Pearls of History, says, " We are gravely told, 
on historical authority, by Moore, in a note to one of his 
Irish Melodies, that during the reign of Bryan, King of 
Munster, a young lady of great beauty, richly dressed, 
and adorned with jewels, undertook a journey from one 
end of the kingdom to another, with a wand in her hand, 
at the top of which was a ring of exceeding great value ; 
and such was the perfection of the laws and the govern- 
ment that no attempt was made upon her honor, nor was 
she robbed of her clothes and jewels. Precisely the 
same story is told of Alfred, of Frothi, King of Denmark, 
and of Rollo, Duke of Normandy. Another romantic an- 
ecdote, fluctuating between two or more sets of actors, is 
an episode in the amours of Emma, the alleged daugh- 
ter of Charlemagne, who, finding that the snow had fallen 
thickly during a nightly interview with her lover, Egin- 



1 66 LIBRARY NOTES. 

hard, took him upon her shoulders, and carried him some 
distance from her bower, to prevent his footsteps from 
being traced. Unluckily, Charlemagne had no daughter 
named Emma or Imma ; and a hundred years before the 
appearance of the chronicle which records the adventure, 
it had been related in print of a German emperor and a 
damsel unknown. The story of Canute commanding the 
waves to roll back rests on the authority of Henry of 
Huntingdon, who wrote about a hundred years after the 
Danish monarch. ' As for the greater number of the 
stories with which the ana are stuffed,' says Voltaire, ' in- 
cluding all those humorous replies attributed to Charles 
the Fifth and Henry the Fourth, to a hundred modern 
princes, you find them in Athenaeus and in our old au- 
thors.' Dionysius the tyrant, we are told by Diogenes of 
Laerte, treated his friends like vases full of good liq- 
uors, which he broke when he had emptied them. This 
is precisely what Cardinal de Retz says of Madame de 
Chevreuse's treatment of her lovers. There is a story of 
Sully's meeting a young lady, veiled, and dressed in 
green, on the back stairs leading to Henry's apartment, 
and being asked by the king whether he had not been 
told that his majesty had a fever and could not receive 
that morning, replied, ' Yes, sire, but the fever is gone j I 
have just met it on the staircase, dressed in green.' This 
story is told of Demetrius and his father. The lesson of 
perseverance in adversity taught by the spider to Robert 
Bruce is said to have been taught by the same insect to 
Tamerlane. ' When Columbus,' says Voltaire, ' promised 
a new hemisphere, people maintained that it did not ex- 
ist ; and when he had discovered it, that it had been 
known a long time.' It was to confute such detractors 
that he resorted to the illustration of the egg y already 
employed by Brunelleschi when his merit in raising the 
cupola of the cathedral of Florence was contested. The 
anecdote of Southampton reading The Faery Queen, 



LIMITS. 167 

whilst Spenser was waiting in the ante-chamber, may pair 
off with one of Louis XIV. As this munificent monarch 
was going over the improvements of Versailles with Le 
Notre, the sight of each fresh beauty or capability tempts 
him to some fresh extravagance, till the architect cries 
out that if their promenade is continued in this fashion 
it will end in the bankruptcy of the state. Southampton, 
after sending first twenty, and then fifty guineas, on com- 
ing to one fine passage after another, exclaims, ' Turn the 
fellow out of the house, or I shall be ruined.' On the 
morning of his execution, Charles I. said to his groom of 
the chambers, ' Let me have a shirt on more than ordi- 
nary, by reason the season is so sharp as probably may 
make me shake, which some observers will imagine pro- 
ceeds from fear. I would have no such imputation ; I 
fear not death.' As Bailly was waiting to be guillotined, 
one of the executioners accused him of trembling. ' I 
am cold,' was the reply. Frederick the Great is reported 
to have said, in reference to a troublesome assailant, 
1 This man wants me to make a martyr of him, but he 
shall not have that satisfaction.' Vespasian told Deme- 
trius the Cynic, 'You do all you can to get me to put 
you to death, but I do not kill a dog for barking at 
me.' This Demetrius was a man of real spirit and hon- 
esty. When Caligula tried to conciliate his good word 
by a large gift in money, he sent it back with the mes- 
sage, ' If you wish to bribe me, you must send me your 
crown.' George III. ironically asked an eminent divine, 
who was just returned from Rome, whether he had con- 
verted the pope. ■ No, sire, I had nothing better to offer 
him.' Cardinal Ximenes, upon a muster which was taken 
against the Moors, was spoken to by a servant of his to 
stand a little out of the smoke of the harquebuse, but he 
said again that ' that was his incense.' The first time 
Charles XII. of Sweden was under fire, he inquired what 
the hissing he heard about his ears was, and being told 



1 68 LIBRARY NOTES. 

that it was caused by the musket-balls, ' Good/ he ex- 
claimed, ' this henceforth shall be my music.' Pope Jul- 
ius II., like many a would-be connoisseur, was apt to ex- 
hibit his taste by fault-finding. On his objecting that 
one of Michel Angelo's statues might be improved by a 
few touches of the chisel, the artist, with the aid of a few 
pinches of marble dust, which he dropped adroitly, con- 
veyed an impression that he had acted on the hint. 
When Halifax found fault with some passages in Pope's 
translation of Homer, the poet, by the advice of Garth, 
left them as they stood, but told the peer that they had 
been retouched, and had the satisfaction of finding him 
as easily satisfied as his holiness. When Lycurgus was 
to reform and alter the state of Sparta, in the consulta- 
tion one advised that it should be reduced to an absolute 
popular equality ; but Lycurgus said to him, ' Sir, begin it 
in your own house.' Had Dr. Johnson forgotten this 
among Bacon's Apophthegms when he told Mrs. Macau- 
lay, ' Madam, I am now become a convert to your way of 
thinking. I am convinced that all mankind are upon an 
equal footing, and to give you an unquestionable proof, 
madam, that I am in earnest, here is a very sensible, civil, 
well-behaved fellow-citizen, your footman ; I desire that 
he may be allowed to sit down and dine with us' ? " Bos- 
well once said, " A man is reckoned a wise man, rather 
for what he does not say, than for what he says : perhaps 
upon the whole Limbertongue speaks a greater quantity 
of good sense than Manly does, but Limbertongue gives 
you such floods of frivolous nonsense that his sense is 
quite drowned. Manly gives you unmixed good sense 
only. Manly will always be thought the wisest man of 
the two." Corwin, a brilliant wit and humorist of the 
Sydney Smith stamp, and in his time the greatest of 
American stump-orators, was often heard to say that his 
life was a failure, because he had not been, with the pub- 
lic, more successful in serious veins. A friend relates that 



LIMITS. 169 

he was riding with him one day, when Corwin remarked 
of a speech made the evening before, " It was very good 
indeed, but in bad style. Never make the people laugh. 
I see that you cultivate that. It is easy and captivating, 
but death in the long run to the speaker." " Why, Mr. 
Corwin, you are the last man living I expected such an 
opinion from." " Certainly, because you have not lived 
so long as I have. Do you know, my young friend, that 
the world has a contempt for the man that entertains it ? 
One must be solemn — solemn as an ass — never say 
anything that is not uttered with the greatest gravity, to 
win respect. The world looks up to the teacher and 
down at the clown ; yet, nine cases out of ten, the clown 
is the better fellow of the two." Sydney Smith is reported 
to have said to his eldest brother, a grave and prosperous 
gentleman : " Brother, you and I are exceptions to the 
laws of nature. You have risen by your gravity, and I 
have sunk by my levity." In one of Steele's Tatlers, 
Sancroft asked the question, why it was that actors, 
speaking of things imaginary, affected audiences as if 
they were real ; whilst preachers, speaking of things real, 
could only affect their congregations as with things im- 
aginary. Bickerstaff answered, "Why, indeed, I don't 
know ; unless it is that we actors speak of things imag- 
inary as if they were real, while you in the pulpit speak 
of things real as if they were imaginary." This answer, 
besides being borrowed by Betterton, has been credited 
to every famous actor since Steele printed it. Every 
reader of Charles Lamb remembers his amusing essay on 
the Origin of Roast Pig. The legend of the first act of 
oyster-eating is enough like it to remind one of it. It is 
related that a man, walking one day by the shore of the 
sea, picked up one of those savory bivalves, just as it was 
in the act of gaping. Observing the extreme smoothness 
of the interior of the shells, he insinuated his finger that 
he might feel the shining surface, when suddenly they 



I^O LIBRARY NOTES. 

closed upon the exploring digit, causing a sensation less 
pleasurable than he anticipated. The prompt withdrawal 
of his finger was scarcely a more natural movement than 
its transfer to his mouth, when he tasted oyster-juice for 
the first time, as the Chinaman in Elia's essay, having 
burnt his finger, first tasted cracklin. The savor was de- 
licious, — he had made a great discovery ; so he picked 
up the oyster, forced open the shells, banqueted upon the 
contents, and soon brought oyster-eating into fashion. 
Nothing, it is said, puzzled Bonaparte more than to meet 
an honest man of good sense ; he did not know what to 
make of him. He would offer him money ; if that failed, 
he would talk of glory, or promise him rank and power ; 
but if all these temptations failed, he set him down for 
an idiot, or a half-mad dreamer. Conscience was a thing 
he could not understand. Rulhiere, who was at St. Peters- 
burg in 1762, when Catherine caused her husband, Peter 
III., to be murdered, wrote a history of the transaction 
on his return to France, which was handed about in man- 
uscript. The empress was informed of it, and endeav- 
ored to procure the destruction of the work. Madame 
GeofTrin was sent to Rulhiere to offer him a considerable 
bribe to throw it into the fire. He eloquently remon- 
strated that it would be a base and cowardly action, 
which honor and virtue forbade. She heard him patiently 
to the end, and then calmly replied, " What ! is n't it 
enough ? " Lord Orrery related as an unquestionable oc- 
currence that Swift once commenced the service, when no- 
body except the clerk attended his church, with, " Dearly 
beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth you and me in sun- 
dry places." Mr. Theophilus Swift afterward discovered 
the anecdote in a jest-book which was published before 
his great kinsman was born. In Domenichi's Facetiae, 
and other old Italian books, there is this story of Dante. 
The famous poet, returning home one day out of the 
country, was overtaken by three gentlemen of Florence, 



LIMITS. 171 

his acquaintance ; who, knowing how ready he was in his 
answers, they all three resolved, by way of proof, to make 
three successive attacks upon him in the following man- 
ner. The first said to him, " Good day, Master Dante ; " 
the second, " Whence come you, Master Dante ? " the 
third, " Are the waters deep, Master Dante ? " To all of 
which, without once stopping his horse, or making the 
least pause, he answered thus : " Good day, and good 
year ; From the Fair ; To the very bottom." Not unlike 
this is a story of Henry IV. of France, who was over- 
taken upon the road by a clergyman that was posting to 
court ; the king, putting his head out of his coach, asked 
the man in his hasty way, " Whence come ye ? Whither 
go ye ? What want ye ? " The clergyman, without any 
ceremony or hesitation, made answer : " From Blois ; To 
Paris; A benefice." With which the king was so well 
pleased, he instantly granted his request. It is related 
of Raphael, that one day, after he had begun the Gala- 
tea, and was already well advanced with it, while he was 
absent a visitor called to see him. The scaffoldings were 
around the room preparatory for the other decorations, 
and the visitor, after looking at the Galatea for a while, 
mounted the ladder, and with a fragment of charcoal 
drew a colossal head on the wall beneath the cornice. 
Raphael did not return, however, and after waiting for 
some time the visitor departed, refusing to give his name 
to the servant, but saying, " Show your master that, and 
he will know who I am." Some time after, Raphael came 
in, and on inquiring if any one had been there, his serv- 
ant told him a small black-bearded man had been there 
and drawn a head on the wall by which he said he would 
recognize him. Raphael looked up, saw the head, and 
exclaimed, " Michel Angelo ! " A similar story is told of 
Apelles and Protogenes. It is told by Pliny, and the 
point of it is, that Apelles, on arriving at Rhodes, im- 
mediately went to call upon Protogenes, who was then 



172 LIBRARY NOTES. 

living there. Protogenes, however, was absent, and the 
studio was in charge of an old woman, who, after Apel- 
les had looked at the pictures, asked the name of the vis- 
itor to give to her master on his return. Apelles did 
not answer at first, but observing a large black panel pre- 
pared for painting on an easel, he took up a pencil and 
drew an extremely delicate outline on it, saying, " He will 
recognize me by this," and departed. On the return of 
Protogenes, being informed of what had happened, he 
looked at the outline, and, struck by its extreme delicacy, 
exclaimed, " That is Apelles — no one else could have 
executed so perfect a work." An anecdote is told of Sir 
George Beaumont going in a coach to a tavern with a 
party of gay young men. The waiter came to the coach 
door with a light, and as he was holding this up to the 
others, those who had already got out went round, and 
getting in at the opposite coach-door came out again, so 
that there seemed to be no end to the procession, and 
the waiter ran into the house, frightened out of his wits. 
The same story is told of Swift and four clergymen 
dressed in canonicals. " Men of the world," says Gold- 
smith, in one of the papers of the Bee, " maintain that 
the true end of speech is not so much to express our wants 
as to conceal them." How often, said Irving, is this 
quoted as one of the subtle remarks of the fine-witted 
Talleyrand ! Every one remembers another familiar witty 
repartee attributed to the latter. When seated between 
Madame de Stael and Madame Recamier, and pouring 
forth gallantry, first at the feet of one, then of the other, 
Madame de Stael suddenly asked him if she and Madame 
Recamier fell into the river, which of the two he would 
save first ? " Madame," replied Talleyrand, " you could 
swim ! " This pretty reply has been matched by Mrs. 
Jameson with one far prettier, and founded on it. Prince 
S. was one day loitering on the banks of the Isar, in the 
English garden at Munich, by the side of the beautiful 



LIMITS. 173 

Madame de V., then the object of his devoted admiration. 
For a while he had been speaking to her of his mother, 
for whom he had ever shown the strongest filial love and 
respect. Afterward, as they wandered on, he began to 
pour forth his soul to the lady of his love with all the 
eloquence of passion. Suddenly she turned and said to 
him, " If your mother and myself were both to fall into 
this river, whom would you save first ? " " My mother," 
he instantly replied ; and then, looking at her expressively, 
immediately added, " To save you first, would be as if I 
were to save myself first." There is yet another varia- 
tion. Captain Morgan, with whom Leslie crossed the 
Atlantic, had a good story apropos to everything that 
happened, and Leslie has preserved a specimen of his 
amusing inventions. Single ladies often cross the water 
under the especial care of the captain of the ship, and if 
a love affair occurs among the passengers, the captain is 
usually the confidant of one or both parties. A very fas- 
cinating young lady was placed under Morgan's care, and 
three young gentlemen fell desperately in love with her. 
They were all equally agreeable, and the young lady was 
puzzled which to encourage. She asked the captain's ad- 
vice. " Come on deck," he said, " the first day when it is 
perfectly calm, — the gentlemen will, of course, all be near 
you. I will have a boat quietly lowered down ; then do 
you jump overboard, and see which of the gentlemen 
will be the first to jump after you. I will take care 
of you." A calm day soon came, the captain's sugges- 
tion was followed, and two of the lovers jumped after 
the lady at the same instant. But between these two 
the lady could not decide, so exactly equal had been 
their devotion. She again consulted the captain. " Take 
the man that did n't jump ; he 's the most sensible fel- 
low, and will make the best husband." A sculptor re- 
lates an incident of General Scott, of whom he once 
made a bust. Having a fine subject to start with, he sue- 



174 LIBRARY NOTES. 

ceeded in giving great satisfaction. At the last sitting 
he attempted to refine and elaborate the lines and mark- 
ings of the face. The general sat patiently ; but when 
he came to see the result, his countenance indicated 
decided displeasure. " Why, sir, what have you been 
doing ? " he asked. " Oh," answered the sculptor, " not 
much, I confess ; I have been working out the details of 
the face a little more, this morning." " Details ? " ex- 
claimed the general warmly; " the details! Why, 

man, you are spoiling the bust ! " Sir Joshua Reynolds 
once went with one of his pupils to see a celebrated 
painting. After viewing it for a while, the young man 
gave it as his deliberate opinion that the picture " needed 
finishing." " Finishing ? " exclaimed Sir Joshua, a little 
impatiently ; " finishing would only spoil the painting." 
Judge Rodgers related a death-bed incident of a neigh- 
bor of his, — a poor honest Scotsman, a wood-sawyer, — 
whose admiration and solace, all through his hard life, 
had been Scotia's great poet. The good man, worn out 
and weary, was told by his physician that his last hour 
had come — that he must soon die. He received the 
announcement philosophically, and after naming a few 
things for which he expressed a desire to live, he said to 
the judge — about the last thing he said on earth, " Yes ; 
for these things I should like to live ; but — but — judge 
— (they had many a time read the poet together) — I 
shall see — Burns ! " Socrates, upon receiving sentence 
of death, said, amongst other things, to his judges, "Is 
this, do you think, no happy journey? Do you think it 
nothing to speak with Orpheus, Musasus, Homer, and 
Hesiod ? " " Shakespeare's Joan of Arc," says Hayward, 
" is a mere embodiment of English prejudice ; yet it is 
not much further from the truth than Schiller's transcend- 
ental and exquisitely poetical character of the maid. 
The German dramatist has also idealized Don Carlos to 
an extent that renders recognition difficult ; and he has 



LIMITS. 175 

flung a halo round William Tell which will cling to the 
name while Switzerland is a country or patriotism any- 
better than a name. Yet more than a hundred years ago 
the eldest son of Haller undertook to prove that the 
legend, in its main features, is the revival or imitation of 
a Danish one, to be found in Saxo Grammaticus. The 
canton of Uri, to which Tell belonged, ordered the book 
to be publicly burnt, and appealed to the other cantons 
to cooperate in its suppression, thereby giving additional 
interest and vitality to the question, which has been at 
length pretty well exhausted by German writers. The 
upshot is that the episode of the apple is relegated to the 
domain of the fable ; and that Tell himself is grudgingly 
allowed a commonplace share in the exploits of the early 
Swiss patriots. Strange to say, his name is not men- 
tioned by any contemporary chronicler of the struggle for 
independence. Sir A. Callcott's picture of Milton and 
his Daughters, one of whom holds a pen as if writing to 
his dictation, is in open defiance of Dr. Johnson's state- 
ment that the daughters were never taught to write. 
There is the story of Poussin impatiently dashing his 
sponge against his canvas, and producing the precise 
effect (the foam on a horse's mouth) which he had been 
long and vainly laboring for ; and there is a similar one 
told of Haydn, the musical composer, when required to 
imitate a storm at sea. He kept trying all sorts of pas- 
sages, ran up and down the scale, and exhausted his 
ingenuity in heaping together chromatic intervals and 
strange discords. Still Curtz (the author of the libretto) 
was not satisfied. At last the musician, out of all pa- 
tience, extended his hands to the two extremities of the 
keys, and, bringing them rapidly together, exclaimed, 
* The deuce take the tempest ; I can make nothing of it.' 
' That is the very thing,' exclaimed Curtz, delighted with 
the truth of the representation. Neither Haydn nor 
Curtz had ever seen the sea. Sir David Brewster, in his 



I76 LIBRARY NOTES. 

life of Newton, says that neither Pemberton nor Whis- 
ton, who received from Newton himself the history of his 
first ideas of gravity, records the story of the falling ap- 
ple. It was mentioned, however, to Voltaire by Catherine 
Barton, Newton's niece, and to Mr. Green by Mr. Martin 
Folkes, the President of the Royal Society. ' We saw the 
apple-tree in 18 14, and brought away a portion of one of 
its roots.' The concluding remark reminds us of Wash- 
ington Irving's hero, who boasted of having parried a 
musket bullet with a small sword, in proof of which he 
exhibited the sword a little bent in the hilt. The apple is 
supposed to have fallen in 1665. Father Prout (Mahony) 
translated several of the Irish Melodies into Greek and 
Latin verse, and then jocularly insinuated a charge of 
plagiarism against the author. Moore was exceedingly 
annoyed, and remarked to a friend who made light of the 
trick, ' This is all very well for your London critics ; but, 
let me tell you, my reputation for originality has been 
gravely impeached in the provincial newspapers on the 
strength of these very imitations.' " Dr. Johnson's Latin 
translation of the Messiah was published in 1731, and 
Pope is reported to have said, " The writer of this poem 
will leave it a question for posterity, whether his or mine 
be the original." Trench, in a note to one of his Hul- 
sean lectures, says, " There is a curious account of a 
fraud which was played off on Voltaire, connecting itself 
with a singular piece of literary forgery. A Jesuit mis- 
sionary, whose zeal led him to assume the appearance of 
an Indian fakir, in the beginning of the last century 
forged a Veda, of which the purport was secretly to un- 
dermine the religion which it professed to support, and 
so to facilitate the introduction of Christianity — to ad- 
vance, that is, the kingdom of truth with a lie. This 
forged Veda is full of every kind of error or ignorance in 
regard to the Indian religion. After lying, however, long 
in a Romanist missionary college at Pondicherry, it found 



LIMITS. 177 

its way to Europe, and a transcript of it came into the 
hands of Voltaire, who eagerly used it for the purpose of 
depreciating the Christian books, and showing how many 
of their doctrines had been anticipated by the wisdom of 
the East. The book had thus an end worthy of its be- 
ginning." 

Wendell Phillips, in his lecture upon the Lost Arts, 
made some remarkable statements, to prove the superior- 
ity of the ancients in many things. " In every matter, r 
he said, "that relates to invention — to use, or beauty, or 
form — we are borrowers. You may glance around the 
furniture of the palaces of Europe, and you may gather 
all these utensils of art or use, and when you have fixed 
the shape and forms in your mind, I will take you into the 
Museum of Naples, which gathers all remains of the do- 
mestic life of the Romans, and you shall not find a single 
one of these modern forms of art, or beauty, or use, that 
was not anticipated there. We have hardly added one 

single line or sweep of beauty to the antique I 

had heard that nothing had been observed in ancient 
times which could be called by the name of glass ; that 
there had been merely attempts to imitate it. In Pompeii, 
a dozen miles south of Naples, which was covered with 
ashes eighteen hundred years ago, they broke into a room 
full of glass \ there was ground glass, window glass, cut 
glass, and colored glass of every variety. It was undoubt- 
edly a glass-maker's factory Their imitations of 

gems deceived not only the lay people, but the connois- 
seurs were also cheated. Some of these imitations in 
later years have been discovered. The celebrated vase 
of the Geneva cathedral was considered a solid emerald. 
The Roman Catholic legend of it was that it was one of 
the treasures that the Queen of Sheba gave to Solomon, 
and that it was the identical cup out of which the Saviour 
ate the Last Supper. Columbus must have admired it. 
It was venerable in his day ; it was death at that time for 
12 



178 LIBRARY NOTES. 

anybody to touch it but a Catholic priest. And when 
Napoleon besieged Genoa it was offered by the Jews to 
loan the senate three millions of dollars on that single 
article as security. Napoleon took it and carried it to 
France, and gave it to the Institute. In a fool's night, 
somewhat reluctantly, the scholars said, ' It is not a stone ; 
we hardly know what it is.' Cicero said he had seen the 
entire Iliad, which is a poem as large as the New Testa- 
ment, written on skin so that it could be rolled up in the 
compass of a nut-shell. Now this is imperceptible to the 
ordinary eye. You have seen the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence in the compass of a quarter of a dollar, written 
with the aid of glasses. I have a paper at home as long as 
half my hand, on which was photographed the whole con- 
tents of a London newspaper. It was put under a dove's 
wing and sent into Paris, where they enlarged it and read 
the news. That copy of the Iliad must have been made 

by some such process You may visit Dr. Abbott's 

Museum, where you will see the ring of Cheops. Bunsen 
puts him at five hundred years before Christ. The signet 
of the ring is about the size of a quarter of a dollar, and 
the engraving is invisible without the aid of glasses. No 
man was ever shown into the cabinet of gems in Italy 
without being furnished with a microscope to look at them. 
It would be idle for him to look at them without one. 
He could n't appreciate the delicate lines and the expres- 
sion of the faces. If you go to Parma, they will show 
you a gem once worn on the finger of Michel Angelo, of 
which the engraving is two thousand years old, on which 
there are the figures of seven women. You must have 
the aid of a glass in order to distinguish the forms at all. 
I have a friend who has a ring, perhaps three quarters of 
an inch in diameter, and on it is the naked figure of the 
god Hercules. By the aid of glasses you can distin- 
guish the interlacing muscles, and count every separate 
hair on the eyebrows. Layard says he would be unable 



LIMITS. 179 

to read the engravings on Nineveh without strong specta- 
cles, they are so extremely small. Rawlinson brought 
home a stone about twenty inches long and ten inches 
wide, containing an entire treatise on mathematics. It 
would be perfectly illegible without glasses. Now, if we 
are unable to read it without the aid of glasses, you may 
suppose the man who engraved it had pretty good specta- 
cles. So the microscope, instead of dating from our time, 
finds its brothers in the Books of Moses — and these are 
infant brothers." Speaking of colors, he said, "The 
burned city of Pompeii was a city of stucco. All the houses 
are stucco outside, and it is stained with Tyrian purple — 
the royal color of antiquity. But you can never rely on 
the name of a color after a thousand years, so the Tyrian 
purple is almost a red. This is a city of all red. It had 
been buried seventeen hundred years, and, if you take a 
shovel now and clear away the ashes, this color flames up 
upon you a great deal richer than anything we can pro- 
duce. You can go down into the narrow vault which 
Nero built him as a retreat from the great heat, and you 
will find the walls painted all over with fanciful designs 
in arabesque, which have been buried beneath the earth 
fifteen hundred years ; but when the peasants light it up 
with their torches, the colors flash out before you as fresh 
as they were in the days of St. Paul. Page, the artist, 
spent twelve years in Venice, studying Titian's method of 
mixing his colors, and he thinks he has got it. Yet come 
down from Titian, whose colors are wonderfully and per- 
fectly fresh, to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and, although his col- 
ors are not yet a hundred years old, they are fading ; the 
color on his lips is dying out, and the cheeks are losing 
their tints. He did not know how to mix well. And his 

mastery of color is as yet un equaled The French 

have a theory that there is a certain delicate shade of blue 
that Europeans cannot see. In one of his lectures to his 
students, Ruskin opened his Catholic mass-book and said, 



180 LIBRARY NOTES. 

1 Gentlemen, we are the best chemists in the world. No 
Englishman ever could doubt that. But we cannot make 
such a scarlet as that, and even if we could, it would not 
last for twenty years. Yet this is five hundred years old.' 
The Frenchman says, ' I am the best dyer in Europe ; 
nobody can equal me, and nobody can surpass Lyons.' 
Yet in Cashmere, where the girls make shawls worth thirty 
thousand dollars, they will show him three hundred dis- 
tinct colors which he not only cannot make but cannot 
even distinguish Mr. Colton, of the Boston Jour- 
nal, the first week he landed in Asia, found that his chro- 
nometer was out of order from the steel of the works 
having become rusted. The London Medical and Surgi- 
cal Journal advises surgeons not to venture to carry any 
lancets to Calcutta ; to have them gilded, because Eng- 
lish steel could not bear the atmosphere of India. Yet 
the Damascus blades of the Crusades were not gilded, 
and they are as perfect as they were eight centuries ago. 
.... If a London chronometer-maker wants the best 
steel to use in his chronometer, he does not send to Shef- 
field, the centre of all science, but to the Punjaub, the 
empire of the five rivers, where there is no science at all. 
.... Scott, in his Crusaders, describes a meeting be- 
tween Richard Cceur de Lion and Saladin. Saladin asks 
Richard to show him the wonderful strength for which 
he is famous, and the Norman monarch responds by sever- 
ing a bar of iron which lies on the floor of the tent. Sala- 
din says, ' I cannot do that ; ' but he takes an eider-down 
pillow from the sofa, and drawing his keen blade across 
it, it falls in two pieces. Richard says, ' This is the black 
art ; it is magic \ it is the devil ; you cannot cut that which 
has no resistance j ' and Saladin, to show him that such 
is not the case, takes a scarf from his shoulders, which is 
so light that it almost floats in the air, and, tossing it up, 
severs it before it can descend. George Thompson saw 
a man in Calcutta throw a handful of floss silk into the 



LIMITS. l8l 

air, and a Hindoo sever it into pieces with his sabre 

Mr. Batterson, of Hartford, walking with Brunei, the archi- 
tect of the Thames Tunnel, in Egypt, asked him what he 
thought of the mechanical power of the Egyptians, and 
he said, ' There is Pompey's Pillar ; it is one hundred 
feet high, and the capital weighs two thousand pounds. 
It is something of a feat to hang two thousand pounds 
at that height in the air, and the few men that can do 
it would better discuss Egyptian mechanics.' .... We 
have only just begun to understand ventilation properly 
for our houses, yet late experiments at the pyramids in 
Egypt show that those Egyptian tombs were ventilated in 
the most perfect and scientific manner. Again, cement 
is modern, for the ancients dressed and jointed their 
stones so closely that in buildings thousands of years old 
the thin blade of a penknife cannot be forced between 
them. The railroad dates back to Egypt. Arago has 
claimed that they had a knowledge of steam. Bramah 
acknowledges that he took the idea of his celebrated lock 
from an ancient Egyptian pattern. De Tocqueville says 
there was no social question that was not discussed to 
rags in Egypt." 

Humboldt, in his Cosmos, states that the Chinese had 
magnetic carriages with which to guide themselves across 
the great plains of Tartary, one thousand years before 
our era, on the principle of the compass. The Romans 
used movable types to mark their pottery and indorse 
their books. Layard found in Nineveh a magnifying lens 
of rock crystal, which Sir David Brewster considers a 
true optical lens, and the origin of the microscope. Ex- 
periments foreshadowing photography, giving remarkable 
results, began to be made more than three centuries ago, 
and more than two and a half centuries before Daguerre. 
The principle of the stereoscope, invented by Professor 
Wheatstone, was known to Euclid, described by Galen 
fifteen hundred years ago, and more fully long afterward 



1 82 LIBRARY NOTES. 

the works of Giambattista Porta. The Thames Tun- 
nel, thought such a novelty, was anticipated by that under 
the Euphrates at Babylon. 

" It is usually attributed to Aristotle, indeed, as his 
peculiar glory," says an authority on mental philosophy, 
" that he should at once have originated, and brought to 
perfection, a science which, for more than two thousand 
years, has received few alterations, found few minds ca- 
pable of suggesting improvements. Recent labors of 
Orientalists have, however, brought to light the fact that 
in India, long before the palmy days of Grecian philoso- 
phy, logic was pursued with vigor as a study and science. 
The Nyaya of Gotama holds, in the Indian systems of 
philosophy, much the same place the Organon of Aris- 
totle holds with us. The two, however, are quite inde- 
pendent of each other. Aristotle was no disciple of Go- 
tama." 

The so-called modern manifestations of spiritualism, 
as table-turning and direct spirit-writing, have been prac- 
ticed in China from time immemorial ; they have been 
known there at least from the days of Lao-tse, and he 
was an aged man when Confucius was a youth, between 
five and six centuries before the Christian era. Those 
who have read the travels in Thibet of the two Lazarite 
monks, Hue and Gabet, will recall many illustrations of 
spiritualism from their pages ; and here, too, as in China, 
these practices date from a very remote time. M. Tscher- 
panoff published, in 1858, at St. Petersburg, the results 
of his investigations with the Lamas of Thibet. He at- 
tests (having been a witness in one or two cases) " that 
the Lamas, when applied to for the recovery of stolen or 
hidden things, take a little table, put one hand on it, and 
after nearly half an hour the table is lifted up by an in- 
visible power, and is (with the hand of the Lama always 
on it) carried to the place where the thing in question is 
to be found, whether in or out of doors, where it drops, 



LIMITS. 183 

generally indicating exactly the spot where the article is 
to be found." Mesmerism is not new. Amongst Egyp- 
tian sculptures are people in the various attitudes which 
mesmerism in modern times induces. The Hebrews 
knew something of this science, for Baalam manifestly 
consulted a clairvoyant — a man in a " trance with his 
eyes open." The Greeks also had a knowledge of it. 
In Taylor's Plato it is said a man appeared before Aris- 
totle in the Lyceum, who could read on one side of a 
brazen shield what was written on the other. The Ro- 
mans were not ignorant of it, for Plautus, in one of his 
plays, asks, " What, and although I were by my continual 
slow touch to make him as if asleep ? " 

As to social science, here is the germ of Fourierism, in 
the Confessions of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, fifteen 
hundred years before Fourier : " And many of us friends, 
conferring about and detesting the turbulent turmoil of 
human life, had debated and now almost resolved on liv- 
ing apart from business and the bustle of men ; and this 
was to be thus obtained : we were to bring whatever we 
might severally possess, and make one household of all ; 
so that through the truth of our friendship nothing should 
belong especially to any, but the whole, thus derived from 
all, should as a whole belong to each, and all to all. We 
thought there might be some ten persons in this society ; 
some of us very rich, especially Romanianus, our towns- 
man, from childhood a very familiar friend of mine, whom 
the grievous perplexities of his affairs had brought up to 
court. He was the most earnest for this project ; and 
his voice was of great weight, because his ample estate 
far exceeded any of the rest. We had settled, also, that 
two annual officers, as it were, should provide all things 
necessary, the rest being undisturbed. But when we be- 
gan to consider whether the wives, which some of us 
already had, and others hoped to have, would allow this, 
all that plan, which was being so well moulded, fell to 



1 84 LIBRARY NOTES. 

pieces in our hands, and was utterly dashed and cast 
aside. Thence we betook us to sighs and groans, and to 
follow the broad and beaten ways of the world." 

In this beautiful passage from the Gulistan, or Rose 
Garden, of Saadi, written more than seven centuries ago, 
will be found an incomparable recipe for a famous hot- 
weather drink, much affected by Americans. Heliogab- 
alus would have given a slice of his empire for that one 
immortal cobbler. " I recollect," says the poet, "that in 
my youth, as I was passing through a street, I cast my 
eyes on a beautiful girl. It was in the autumn, when the 
heat dried up all moisture from the mouth, and the sul- 
try wind made the marrow boil in the bones ; so that, be- 
ing unable to support the sun's powerful beams, I was 
obliged to take shelter under the shade of a wall in 
hopes that some one would relieve me from the distress- 
ing heat of summer, and quench my thirst with a draught 
of water. Suddenly from the shade of the portico of a 
house I beheld a female form, whose beauty it is impossi- 
ble for the tongue of eloquence to describe ; insomuch 
that it seemed as if the dawn was rising in the obscurity 
of night, or as if the water of immortality was issuing 
from the land of darkness. She held in her hand a cup 
of snow-water, into which she sprinkled sugar, and mixed 
it with the juice of the grape. I know not whether what 
I perceived was the fragrance of rose-water, or that she 
had infused into it a few drops from the blossom of her 
cheek. In short, I received the cup from her beauteous 
hand, and drinking the contents, found myself restored 
to new life. The thirst of my heart is not such that it 
can be allayed with a drop of pure water ; the streams 
of whole rivers would not satisfy it. How happy is that 
fortunate person whose eyes- every morning may behold 
such a countenance. He who is intoxicated with wine 
will be sober again in the course of the night ; but he 
who is intoxicated by the cup-bearer will not recover his 
senses until the day of judgment." 



LIMITS. 185 

Cicero maintained the doctrine of universal brother- 
hood as distinctly as it was afterward maintained by the 
Christian Church. " Men were born," he says, " for the 

sake of men, that each should assist the others 

Nature ordains that a man should wish the good of every 
man, whoever he may be, for this very reason, that he is 

a man Nature has inclined us to love men, and 

this is the foundation of the law." Marcus Aurelius 
crystallized the " idea " of free government in one re- 
markable passage : " The idea of a polity in which there 
is the same law for all, a polity administered with regard 
to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea 
of a kingly government which respects most of all the 
freedom of the governed." And here is the idea of for- 
giveness of injuries, by Epictetus : " Every man has two 
handles, one of which will bear taking hold of, the other 
not. If thy brother sin against thee, lay not hold of the 
matter by this, that he sins against thee : for by this 
handle the matter will not bear taking hold of. But 
rather lay hold of it by this, that he is thy brother, thy 
born mate ; and thou wilt take hold of it by what will 
bear handling." Here, too, is the idea of the Golden 
Rule, by Confucius, five hundred years before our era : 
" To have enough empire over one's self, in order to 
judge of others by comparison with ourselves, and to act 
toward them as we would wish that one should act to- 
ward us — that is what we can call the doctrine of hu- 
manity. There is nothing beyond it." And this is the 
prayer claimed to have been in use by religious Jews for 
nearly four thousand years, found by our Lord, improved 
by Him, and adopted for the use of Christians in all 
time : " Our Father who art in Heaven, be gracious unto 
us ! O Lord our God, hallowed be thy name, and let 
the remembrance of Thee be glorified in heaven above and 
in the earth here below ! Let thy kingdom rule over us 
now and forever ! Remit and forgive unto all men what- 



1 86 LIBRARY NOTES. 

ever they have done against me ! And lead us not into 
the power (hands) of temptation, but deliver us from the 
evil. For thine is the kingdom, and thou shalt reign in 
glory forever and ever more." Now hear the saying of 
King Solomon — wiser than Confucius, or Cicero, or Mar- 
cus Aurelius, or Epictetus, or any rabbi : " The thing that 
hath been is that which shall be, and there is no new 
thing under the sun." 



VII. 

INCONGRUITY. 

" How contradictory it seems," remarked Washington 
Irving, writing of Oliver Goldsmith, " that one of the 
most delightful pictures of home and homefelt happiness 
should be drawn by a homeless man ; that the most ami- 
able picture of domestic virtue and all the endearments 
of the married state should be drawn by a bachelor who 
had been severed from domestic life almost from boy- 
hood ; that one of the most tender, touching, and affect- 
ing appeals on behalf of female loveliness should have 
been made by a man whose deficiencies in all the graces 
of person and manner seemed to mark him out for a cyn- 
ical disparager of the sex." Byron thought it contradic- 
tory that the ancients, in their mythology, should have 
represented Wisdom by a woman, and Love by a boy. 
" Don't you know," urged Sydney Smith, " as the French 
say, there are three sexes — men, women, and clergy- 
men ? " In the old church at Hatfield, in England, 
amongst the antiquities, there is a recumbent statue, 
which every one believed was a woman, till Flaxman, the 
sculptor, examined it, and satisfied himself that it was a 
priest. Madame De StaeTs Delphine was thought to 
contain a representation of Talleyrand in the character 
of an old woman. On her pressing for his opinion of 
that work, he said, "That is the work — is it not ? — in 
which you and I are exhibited in the disguise of fe- 
males ? " Bulwer seemed to Harriet Martineau " a 
woman of genius, inclosed by misadventure in a man's 
form." A lady, speaking of the works of the poet Thom- 



1 88 LIBRARY NOTES. 

son, observed that she could gather from his writings 
three parts of his character : that he was an ardent lover, 
a great swimmer, and rigorously abstinent. Savage, to 
whom the remark was addressed, assured her that, in re- 
gard to the first, she was altogether mistaken ; for the 
second, his friend was perhaps never in cold water in his 
life ; and as to the third, he indulged in every luxury that 
came within his reach. Holmes states, in the preface to 
Elsie Venner, that while the story was in progress, he 
received the most startling confirmation of the possibility 
of the existence of a character like that he had drawn as 
a purely imaginary conception. Mrs. Hawthorne said 
that men who had committed great crimes, or whose 
memories held tragic secrets, would sometimes write to 
her husband, or even come great distances to see him, 
and unburden their souls. This was after the publica- 
tion of The Scarlet Letter, which made them regard him 
as the father confessor for all hidden sins. The Sweden- 
borgians informed Poe that they had discovered all that 
he said in a magazine article, entitled Mesmeric Revela- 
tions, to be absolutely true, although at first they were 
very strongly inclined to doubt his veracity, — a thing 
which, in that particular instance, he never dreamed of 
not doubting himself. Lord Lansdowne and Sydney 
Smith, with a companion or two, went incognito to De- 
ville, the phrenologist in the Strand, to have their charac- 
ters read from their skulls, and were most perversely in- 
terpreted. Lord Lansdowne was pronounced to be so 
absorbed in generalization as to fail in all practical mat- 
ters, and Sydney Smith to be a great naturalist — " never 
so happy as when arranging his birds and fishes." " Sir," 
said the divine, with a stare of comical stupidity, " I don't 
know a fish from a bird ; " and the chancellor of the ex- 
chequer was conscious that " all the fiddle-faddle of the 
cabinet " was committed to him on account of his love of 
what he called practical business. Crabb Robinson, on 



INCONGRUITY. 1 89 

one of his visits to the British Gallery, where a collection 
of English portraits was exhibited, was displeased to see 
the name of the hated Jeffreys put to a " dignified and 
sweet countenance, that might have conferred new grace 
on some delightful character." Consistently enough with 
the delineation of the portrait, Evelyn recorded in his 
Memoirs that he " saw the Chief Justice Jeffreys in a large 
company the night before, and that he thought he laughed, 
drank, and danced too much for a man who had that day 
condemned Algernon Sidney to the block." An emi- 
nent gentleman who inspected the portraits of Luther and 
Melancthon, as they appear on their monuments in Wit- 
tenberg, describes the countenance of the latter as " acute 
and sarcastic." " Had subtlety and craft been his qual- 
ities, I should have thought the portrait expressed them." 
It is related of one of the philanthropists of France, who 
at one time held no insignificant place in the government, 
that when a distracted wife, who had pleaded to him in 
vain for her husband's life, in retiring from his presence, 
chanced to tread on his favorite spaniel's tail, he ex- 
claimed, " Good heavens, madame, have you, then, no 
humanity ? " In the palace Doria, said Willis, there is a 
portrait of " a celebrated widow " (so called in the cata- 
logue) by Vandyck, — a " had-been beautiful woman, in 
a staid cap, with hands wonderfully painted." The cus- 
todian told the visitor that it was " a portrait of the wife 
of Vandyck, painted as an old woman to mortify her ex- 
cessive vanity, when she was but twenty-three. He kept 
the picture until she was older, and, at the time of his 
death, it had become a flattering likeness, and was care- 
fully treasured by the widow." Lavater, in his Physiog- 
nomy, says that Lord Anson, from his countenance, must 
have been a very wise man. Horace Walpole, who knew 
Lord Anson well, said he was the most stupid man he 
ever knew. Until a few years ago, it is stated, a portrait 
at Holland House was prescriptively reverenced as a 



190 LIBRARY NOTES. 

speaking likeness of Addison, and a bust was designed 
after it by a distinguished sculptor. It turns out to be 
the copy of a portrait of a quite different person from the 
"great Mr. Addison." 

Many a famous name, it has been truly said, has been 
indebted for its brightest lustre to things which were 
flung off as a pastime, or composed as an irksome duty, 
whilst the performances upon which the author most 
relied or prided himself have fallen still-born or been 
neglected by posterity. Thus Petrarch, who trusted to 
his Latin poems for immortality, mainly owes it to the 
Sonnets, which he regarded as ephemeral displays of 
feeling or fancy of the hour. Thus Chesterfield, the or- 
ator, the statesman, the Maecenas and Petronius of his 
age, and (above all) the first viceroy who ventured on 
justice to Ireland, is floated down to our times by his 
familiar Letters to his Son. Thus Johnson, the Colossus 
of Literature, were he to look up or down (to adopt the 
more polite hypothesis), would hardly believe his eyes or 
ears, on finding that Bozzy, the snubbed and suppressed, 
yet ever elastic and rebounding Bozzy, is the prop, the 
bulwark, the key-stone of his fame ; " the salt which 
keeps it sweet, the vitality which preserves it from putre- 
faction." We have it upon the authority of old Thomas 
Fuller, that " when a French printer complained that he 
was utterly undone by printing a solid, serious book of 
Rabelais concerning physic, Rabelais, to make him rec- 
ompense, made that his jesting, scurrilous work, which 
repaired the printer's loss with advantage." " It was im- 
possible to tell beforehand," said Northcote to Hazlitt, 
" what would hit the public. You might as well pretend 
to say what ticket would turn up a prize in the lottery. It 
was not chance neither, but some unforeseen coincidence 
between the subject and the prevailing taste, that you 
could not possibly be a judge of. I had once painted two 
pictures — one of a Fortune-teller (a boy with a monkey), 



INCONGRUITY. 191 

and another called The Visit to the Grandmother ; and 
Raphael Smith came to me and wanted to engrave them, 
being willing to give a handsome sum for the first, but 
only to do the last as an experiment. He sold ten times 
as many of the last as of the first, and told me that there 
were not less than five different impressions done of it in 
Paris ; and once, when I went to his house, to get one to 
complete a set of engravings after my designs, they asked 
me six guineas for a proof impression ! This was too 
much, but I was delighted that I could not afford to pay 
for my own work, from the value that was set upon it." 
Cervantes, who was fifty-eight when he published the first 
part of Don Quixote, had, like Fielding, " written a con- 
siderable number of indifferent dramas which gave no 
indication of the immortal work which afterward aston- 
ished and delighted the world. He was the author of 
several tales, for which even his subsequent fame can 
procure very few readers, and would certainly have been 
forgotten if the lustre of his masterpiece had not shed 
its light upon everything which belonged to him. It was 
not till he was verging upon three-score that he hit upon 
the happy plan which was to exhibit his genius, and 
which nothing previously sufficed to display. Fielding 
was equally ignorant of his province. Writing for a sub- 
sistence, trying everything by turns, having the strongest 
interest in discovering how he could lay out his powers 
to the best advantage, he mistook his road, and only 
found it by chance. If Pamela had never existed, it 
is more than possible that English literature might 
have wanted Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Amelia." 
Scott's conversation about his own productions, as re- 
corded by Moore in his Diary, is curious, showing that 
he rather stumbled upon his talent than cultivated it 
originally. " Had begun Waverley long before, and then 
thrown it by, until having occasion for some money (to 
help his brother, I think), he bethought himself of it, but 



I92 LIBRARY NOTES. 

could not find the MSS." When he did, "made 3,000 
pounds by Waverley." 

It is set down as a striking commentary upon the taste 
of his contemporaries that Hogarth's six pictures of Mar- 
riage a la Mode were sold for nineteen pounds and six 
shillings, though fifty years afterward they brought one 
thousand three hundred and eighty pounds. The manu- 
script of Robinson Crusoe ran through the whole trade, 
nor would any one print it, though the writer, De Foe, 
was in good repute as an author. The bookseller who 
risked the publication was a speculator, not remarkable 
for discernment. The Vicar of Wakefield lay unpub- 
lished for two years after the publisher, Newberry, was 
importuned by Dr. Johnson to pay sixty pounds for it to 
save the author from distress. Paradise Lost made a 
narrow escape. Sterne found it hard to find a publisher 
for Tristram Shandy. The sermon in it, he says in the 
preface to his Sermons, was printed by itself some years 
before, but could find neither purchasers nor readers. 
When it was inserted in his eccentric work, with the ad- 
vantage of Trim's fine reading, it met with a most favor- 
able reception, and occasioned the others to be collected*. 
Cowper's first volume of poems was published by John- 
son, and fell dead from the press. Author and publisher 
were to incur equal loss. Cowper begged Johnson to 
forgive him his debt, and this was done. In return, Cow- 
per sent Johnson his Task, saying : " You behaved gener- 
ously to me on a former occasion ; if you think it safe to 
publish this new work, I make you a present of it." 
Johnson published it. It became popular. The former 
volume was then sold with it. The profits to the pub- 
lisher, it is said, were at least fifty thousand dollars. 
Cooper says that the first volume of The Spy was act- 
ually printed several months before he felt a sufficient 
inducement to write a line of the second. As the second 
volume, he says, was slowly printing, from manuscript 



INCONGRUITY. 1 93 

that was barely dry when it went into the compositor's 
hands, the publisher intimated that the work might grow 
to a length that would consume the profits. To set 
his mind at rest, the last chapter was actually written, 
printed, and paged, several weeks before the chapters 
which preceded it were even thought of. The Culprit 
Fay, we are told by the biographer of Drake, was com- 
posed hastily among the Highlands of the Hudson, in the 
summer of 18 19. The author was walking with some 
friends on a warm moonlight evening, when one of the 
party remarked that it would be difficult to write a fairy 
poem, purely imaginative, without the aid of human char- 
acters. When the party was reassembled two or three 
days afterward, The Culprit Fay was read to them, nearly 
as it is now printed. Drake placed a very modest estimate 
on his own productions, and it is believed that but a small 
portion of them have been preserved. When on his 
death-bed, a friend inquired of him what disposition he 
would have made of his poems. " Oh, burn them," he 
replied; "they are quite valueless." Written copies of a 
number of them were, however, in circulation, and some 
had been incorrectly printed in the periodicals ; and for 
this reason was published the single collection of them 
which has appeared. A mere rumor that Erasmus' Col- 
loquies had got into the Index Expurgatorius, sold an 
impression of four-and-twenty thousand copies, and made 
the fortune of the publisher. Fenelon's Adventures of 
Telemachus, which had hitherto remained in manuscript, 
was given to the w r orld by the dishonesty of a servant 
who had been employed to have the work copied, but 
who sold it to a bookseller without disclosing the au- 
thor's name. The king, having been told that it was 
from the pen of the Archbishop of Cambrai, and prob- 
ably sharing an unfounded suspicion then current, that 
the book was a satire on the court, took measures to sup- 
press it ; but a few copies escaped seizure, and an imper- 
13 



194 LIBRARY NOTES. 

feet edition was printed in Holland in 1699. Others 
followed rapidly, and for a long time the press was un- 
able to keep up with the public demand. Sir Matthew 
Hale wrote four volumes in folio, " three of which I have 
read," says Baxter, " against atheism, Sadduceeism, and 
infidelity, to prove first the Deity, and then the immortal- 
ity of man's soul, and then the truth of Christianity and 
the Holy Scripture, answering the infidel's objections 
against Scripture. It is strong and masculine, only too 
tedious for impatient readers. He said he wrote it only 
at vacant hours in his circuits, to regulate his medita- 
tions, finding, that while he wrote down what he thought 
on, his thoughts were the easier kept close to work, and 
kept in a method. But I could not persuade him to 
publish them." 

One is tempted to speculate upon the books that never 
were published. As some of the best books have been 
written in prison or captivity, so some of like quality may 
have perished with their unfortunate authors. If so many 
great authors, like Dryden and Cervantes, and Le Sage 
and Spenser, almost starved, barely procuring a pittance 
for their published works, how many good works may 
not, in despair, have been destroyed by their authors. If 
so many great works were accidentally discovered in 
manuscript, how many as great may have perished in that 
form. " The Romans wrote their books either on parch- 
ment or on paper made of the Egyptian papyrus. The 
latter, being the cheapest, was, of course, the most com- 
monly used. But after the communication between Eu- 
rope and Egypt was broken off, on account of the latter 
having been seized upon by the Saracens, the papyrus 
was no longer in use in Italy or in other European coun- 
tries. They were obliged, on that account, to write all 
their books upon parchment, and as its price was high, 
books became extremely rare, and of great value. We 
may judge of the scarcity of materials for writing them 



INCONGRUITY. 1 95 

from one circumstance. There still remain several manu- 
scripts of the eighth, ninth, and following centuries, writ- 
ten on parchment, from which some former writing had 
been erased, in order to substitute a new composition in 
its place. In this manner, it is probable, several books 
of the ancients perished. A book of Livy, or of Tacitus, 
might be erased, to make room for the legendary tale of 
a saint, or the superstitious prayers of a missal." Truly, 
a resurrection of the unpublished, to say the least, would 
expose an interesting mass of intellectual novelties. The 
book-tasters, wise as they think themselves, are very far 
from being unerring in their estimates of brain values, and 
better things than they have approved may have gone into 
the basket. The weather or bad chirography may have 
damned many a production of genius. The rejection of 
an article for a quarterly may have snuffed out the most 
promising talents. It is possible that some charitable re- 
former may have discovered a way to fuse sects and har- 
monize Christians, but was prevented from showing it to 
the world by the stupidity of printers ! 

The most wonderful and sublime things in nature and 
art are rarely appreciated at first view. Every visitor is 
disappointed at the first sight of Niagara. Mountains 
are not appreciated till we have dwelt long among them. 
Goethe was at first disturbed and confused by the impres- 
sion which Switzerland produced on him. Only after re- 
peated visits, he said, only in later years, when he visited 
those mountains as a mineralogist merely, could he con- 
verse with them at his ease. The sea is but a dead, 
monotonous waste, till we come to feel its immensity and 
power. London is but a great town till we have wandered 
in it, lost ourselves in it, studied it, in fine, till we have 
found it too great to be comprehended, when its marvel- 
ous proportions are expanded into a nation, and it is ac- 
cepted as one of the great powers of the world. " The 
longer one stays in London," said a temporary resident, 



196 LIBRARY NOTES. 

" the more it seems a mockery to say anything about it." 
"I remember," says an American traveler, "having read 
a glorious description of Milan cathedral, and a few days 
later I saw the temple myself. To my first view it was 
only a large marble church, fronting on an unpleasant 
square, and adorned with indistinct spires. I was shocked 
with disappointment. But when I spent a fortnight at 
Milan, and studied the cathedral in every light and through 
every part, I then saw that the description was far inade- 
quate to the actuality." "When the visitor," says Hillard, 
"has passed into the interior of St. Peter's, and so far re- 
covered from the first rush of tumultuous sensations which 
crowd upon him as to be able to look about him, he will be 
struck with, and, if not forewarned, disappointed at, the 
apparent want of magnitude." But he will find that the 
windows of the church are never opened, it is so immense 
as well as so complete ; that it has its own atmosphere, 
and needs no supply from the world without ; that the 
most zealous professor of ventilation would admit that 
there was no work for him to do here. " When we dream 
of the climate of heaven, we make it warmth without 
heat, and coolness without cold, like that of St. Peter's." 
It has been mentioned as a remarkable quality in Cole- 
ridge's mind that edifices excited little interest in him. 
" On his return from Italy, and after having resided for 
some time in Rome, I remember," says Cottle, "his de- 
scribing to me the state of society ; the characters of the 
popes and the cardinals ; the gorgeous ceremonies, with 
the superstitions of the people ; but not one word did he 
utter concerning St. Peter's, the Vatican, or the numerous 
antiquities of the place. I remember to have been with 
Mr. Coleridge at York on our journey into Durham, to 
see Mr. Wordsworth. After breakfast at the inn, perceiv- 
ing Mr. C. engaged, I went out alone, to see the York 
minster, being in the way detained in a bookseller's shop. 
In the meantime, Mr. C, having missed me, set off in 



INCONGRUITY. I97 

search of me. Supposing it probable that I was gone to 
the minster, he went up to the door of that magnificent 
structure, and inquired of the porter, whether such an 
individual as myself had gone in there. Being answered 
in the negative, he had no further curiosity, not even 
looking into the interior, but turned away to pursue his 
search ! so that Mr. C. left York without beholding, or 
wishing to behold, the chief attraction of the city, or being 
at all conscious that he had committed, by his neglect, 
high treason against all architectural beauty ! " North- 
cote mentioned a conceited painter of the name of Edwards, 
who went with Romney to Rome, and when they got into 
the Sistine chapel, turning round to him, said, " Egad, 
George ! we 're bit ! " "Raphael's Transfiguration," says 
Willis, " is agreed to be the finest picture in the world. 
I had made up my mind to the same opinion from the 
engravings of it, but was painfully disappointed in the pict- 
ure. I looked at it from every corner of the room, and 
asked the custodian three times if he was sure this was 
the original. The color offended my eye, blind as Raph- 
ael's name should make it, and I left the room with a sigh, 
and an unsettled faith in my own taste, that made me 
seriously unhappy. My complacency was restored a few 
hours after on hearing that the wonder was entirely in the 
drawing — the colors having quite changed with time." 
Sir Joshua Reynolds says he was informed by the keeper 
of the Vatican that many of those whom he had conducted 
through the various apartments of that edifice, when about 
to be dismissed, had asked for the works of Raphael, and 
would not believe that they had already passed through 
the rooms where they are preserved. " I remember very 
well," he says, " my own disappointment when I first vis- 
ited the Vatican. All the indigested notions of painting 
which I had brought with me from England were to be 
totally done away with and eradicated from my mind. It 
was necessary, as it is expressed on a very solemn occa- 



I98 LIBRARY NOTES. 

sion, that I should become as a little child. Nor does 
painting in this respect differ from other arts. A just and 
poetical taste, and the acquisition of a nice, discriminative 
musical ear, are equally the work of time. Even the eye, 
however perfect in itself, is often unable to distinguish 
between the brilliancy of two diamonds, though the ex- 
perienced jeweler will be amazed at its blindness." "The 
musician by profession," said Goethe, "hears, in an or- 
chestral performance, every instrument, and every single 
tone, whilst one unacquainted with the art is wrapped up 
in the massive effect of the whole. A man merely bent 
upon enjoyment sees in a green or flowery meadow only 
a pleasant plain, whilst the eye of a botanist discovers an 
endless detail of the most varied plants and grasses." 
Gainsborough says that an artist knows an original from 
a copy, by observing the touch of the pencil ; for there 
will be the same individuality in the strokes of the brush 
as in the strokes of a pen. " Those who can at once dis- 
tinguish between different sorts of handwriting are yet 
often astonished at the possession of the faculty when it 
is exercised upon pictures. No engraver, in like manner, 
can counterfeit the style of another. His brethren of 
the craft would not only immediately detect the forgery, 
but would recognize the distinctive strokes of the forger." 
Hogarth and Reynolds, it is said, could not do each 
other justice. Hogarth ranked Reynolds very low as a 
painter. Johnson said " Tristram Shandy did not last ; " 
and Goldsmith noticed the faults of Sterne only. They 
may each have looked with some feeling of envy to the far 
greater immediate success than either of themselves had 
enjoyed ; but it does not follow that Hogarth, Johnson, 
and Goldsmith were so dishonest as to deny the ex- 
istence of the excellences they saw. Unfortunately, per- 
sons engaged in the same departments of literature or 
art generally dislike one another. It is one of the draw- 
backs of genius. Voltaire and Rousseau hated each 



INCONGRUITY. I99 

other ; Fielding despised Richardson ; Petrarch, Dante ; 
Michel Angelo sneered at Raphael ; but fortunately 
their reputations did not depend upon one another. 
Envy and hatred aside, it was impossible for them to 
judge one another justly ; they were too near. A painter 
once confessed to Dr. Johnson that no professor of the 
art ever loved a person who pursued the same craft. The 
whole class of underlings who fed at the table of Smol- 
lett, and existed by his patronage, traduced his character 
and abused his works ; and, as they were no less treach- 
erous to one another than to their benefactor, each was 
eager to betray the rest to him. At the beginning of the 
last century, says Southey, books which are now justly 
regarded as among the treasures of English literature, 
which are the delight of the old and the young, the 
learned and the unlearned, the high and the low, were 
then spoken of with contempt j the Pilgrim's Progress as 
fit only for the ignorant and the vulgar, Robinson Crusoe 
for children ; if any one but an angler condescended to 
look into Izaak Walton, it must be for the sake of find- 
ing something to laugh at. It will never be forgotten, in 
the history of English poetry, that, with a generous and 
just though impatient sense of indignation, Collins, as 
soon as his means enabled him, repaid the publisher of 
his poems the price which he had received for their copy- 
right, indemnified him for the loss in the adventure, and 
committed the remainder, which was by far the greater 
part of the impression, to the flames. But it should also 
be remembered that in the course of one generation 
these poems, without any adventitious aids to bring them 
into notice, were acknowledged to be the best of their 
kind in the language. The very existence of the works 
of William Dunbar has been mentioned as a signal proof 
of the immortality of real merit ; for we know not at 
what precise time he was born, nor when he died, and 
his very name is not, with one solitary exception, to be 



200 LIBRARY NOTES. 

met with in the whole compass of English literature for 
two hundred years ; nor was it till after the lapse of 
three centuries that his poems were collected and pub- 
lished — to secure him the reputation, among his own 
countrymen, of being one of the greatest of Scotland's 
poets. This neglect or inability to acknowledge con- 
temporary genius was humorously hinted at by Coleridge 
in one of his lectures. The lecture being extempora- 
neous, he now and then took up scraps of paper on 
which he had noted the leading points of his subject, 
and made use of books that were about him for quota- 
tion. On turning to one of these (a work of his own), 
he said, " As this is a secret which I confided to the pub- 
lic a year or two ago, and which, to do the public justice, 
has been very faithfully kept, I may be permitted to read 
you a passage from it." 

Tom Taylor's anecdote of Bott, the barrister, illus- 
trates the uncertainty of literary recognition. Bott occu- 
pied the rooms opposite to Goldsmith's in Brick Court ; 
he lent the needy author money, drove him in his gig to 
the Shoemakers' Paradise, eight miles down the Edge- 
ware Road, and occasionally periled both their necks in a 
ditch. Reynolds painted this good-natured barrister, who 
runs a better chance of reaching posterity in that gig of 
his alongside of Goldsmith, than by virtue of the Treatise 
on the Poor Laws which Goldsmith is said to have writ- 
ten up for him. And as if the uncertainty of literary fame 
were not great enough, authors themselves sometimes 
strive to increase it by most extraordinary means. You 
remember Southey's attempt to hoax Theodore Hook re- 
garding the authorship of The Doctor. At Hook's death 
a packet of letters was found addressed to him, as the 
author of The Doctor, and acknowledging presentation 
copies — one from Southey among the rest. They had 
been forwarded from the publisher, and were intended, it 
is presumed, if they were intended for anything, as a trap 



INCONGRUITY. 201 

for Hook's vanity. Sydney Smith positively denied all 
connection with the Plymley Letters in one edition, and 
published them in a collection of his acknowledged works 
some months after. Sir Walter Scott, being taxed at a 
dinner-table as the author of Old Mortality, not only 
denied being the author, but said to Murray, the pub- 
lisher, who was present, " In order to convince you that 
I am not the author, I will review the book for you in the 
Quarterly," — which he actually did, and Murray re- 
tained the manuscript after Sir Walter's death. 

The novelty of a real work of genius is sufficient to de- 
cry it with the incredulous public. All new things, much 
out of the ordinary way, must make a struggle for ex- 
istence. It is but the way of the world. The Jesuits of 
Peru introduced into Protestant England the Peruvian 
bark ; but being a remedy used by Jesuits, the Protestant 
English at once rejected the drug as the invention of the 
devil. Paracelsus introduced antimony as a valuable 
medicine ; he was prosecuted for the innovation, and the 
French Parliament passed an act making it a penal of- 
fense to prescribe it. Dr. Groenvelt first employed can- 
tharides internally, and no sooner did his cures begin to 
make a noise, than he was at once committed to New- 
gate by warrant of the President of the College of Phy- 
sicians. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu first introduced 
into England the practice of inoculation for the small- 
pox, by which malady she had lost an only brother and 
her own fine eye-lashes. She applied the process, after 
earnest examination, to her only son, five years old ; and 
on her return to England, the experiment was tried, at 
her suggestion, on five persons under sentence of death. 
The success of the trial did not prevent the most violent 
clamors against the innovation. The faculty predicted 
unknown disastrous consequences, the clergy regarded it 
as an interference with Divine Providence, and the com- 
mon people were taught to look upon her as an unnatural 



202 LIBRARY NOTES. 

mother, who had imperiled the safety of her own child. 
Although she soon gained influential supporters, the ob- 
loquy which she endured was such as to make her some- 
times repent her philanthropy. Jenner, who introduced 
the still greater discovery of vaccination, was treated 
with ridicule and contempt, and was persecuted, prose- 
cuted, arid oppressed by the Royal College of Physicians. 
After nearly twenty years of patient and sagacious study 
and experiment, he went to London to communicate the 
process to the profession, and to endeavor to procure its 
general adoption. His reception was disheartening in 
the extreme. Not only did the doctors refuse to make 
trial of the process, but the discoverer was accused of an 
attempt to "bestialize " his species by introducing into the 
system diseased matter from a cow's udder ; vaccination 
was denounced from the pulpit as " diabolical," and the 
most monstrous statements respecting its effects upon the 
human system were disseminated and believed. Early in 
the fourteenth century a law was passed making it a cap- 
ital offense to burn coal within the precincts of London. 
In the reign of Edward I. a man was actually executed 
for the commission of the crime. The prejudice contin- 
ued to the close of the sixteenth century. Not more than 
three quarters of a century ago, an ambassador at Paris 
issued cards for a large party, and found, to his dismay, 
that only gentlemen attended, the ladies having absented 
themselves on hearing that his lordship warmed his house 
by means of English coal. The use of forks was at first 
much ridiculed in England ; in one of Beaumont and 
Fletcher's plays, " your fork-carving traveler " is spoken 
of very contemptuously ; and Ben Jonson has also ridi- 
culed them in one of his comedies. " On the invention 
of scissors," says Voltaire, " what was not said of those 
who pared their nails and cut off some of their hair that 
was hanging down over their noses ? They were un- 
doubtedly considered as prodigals and coxcombs, who 



INCONGRUITY. 203 

bought at an extravagant price an instrument just calcu- 
lated to spoil the work of the Creator. What an enor- 
mous sin to pare the horn which God himself made to 
grow at our fingers' ends ! It was absolutely an insult to 
the Divine Being himself. When shirts and stockings 
were invented, it was far worse. It is well known with 
what warmth and indignation the old counselors, who had 
never worn socks, exclaimed against the youthful magis- 
trates who encouraged so dreadful and fatal a luxury." 
The fashion of plaiting shirts began in Rabelais' time ; 
and it was said that the gathers were fit for nothing but to 
harbor lice and fleas. Robespierre's first important cause 
was a defense of the introduction of Franklin's light- 
ning-rods against the charge of impiety. When thresh- 
ing-machines were first introduced into England, there 
was such an opposition to them, and arson became so 
common in consequence, that such farmers as had them 
were obliged to surrender them, or expose them broken 
on the high-road. The fashion of wearing boots with 
pointed toes was supposed to have been peculiarly offen- 
sive to the Almighty, and was believed by many to have 
been the cause of the black death, which carried off, it is 
estimated, in six years, twenty-five millions, or a fourth 
part of the population of Europe. Another opinion, we 
are informed, gained ground, that the Jews were respon- 
sible for the ravages of the plague. It was claimed that 
the Rabbi of Toledo had sent out a venomous mixture 
concocted of consecrated wafers and the blood of Chris- 
tian hearts to the various congregations, with orders to 
poison the wells. The Pope himself undertook to plead 
for their innocency, but even papal bulls were powerless 
to stay the popular madness. In Dekkendorf a church 
was built in honor of the massacre of the Jews of that 
town, and the spot thus consecrated has remained a fa- 
vorite resort of pilgrims down to the present time. 

Amongst the curiosities of literature is " a narrative 



204 LIBRARY NOTES. 

extracted from Luther's writings, of the dialogue related 
by Luther himself to have been carried on between him 
and the devil, who, Luther declares, was the first who 
pointed out to him the absurdity and evil of private mass. 
Of course it is strongly pressed upon the pious reader 
that even Luther himself confesses that the Father of 
Lies was the author of the Reformation ; and a pretty 
good story is made out for the Catholics." John Gait, in 
his Life of Wolsey, says, " Those pious Presbyterians, 
who inveigh against cards as the devil's books, are little 
aware that they were an instrument in the great work of 
the Reformation. The vulgar game about that time was 
the devil and the priest ; and the skill of the players con- 
sisted in preserving the priest from the devil ; but the 
devil in the end always got hold of him." 

Mighty means indeed trifles have sometimes proved. 
The foolish ballad of Lilli Burlero, treating the Papists, 
and chiefly the Irish, in a very ridiculous manner, slight 
and insignificant as it now seems, had once a more pow- 
erful effect than the Philippics of either Demosthenes or 
Cicero ; it contributed not a little toward the great revo- 
lution in 1688 ; the whole army and the people in country 
and city caught it up, and " sang a deluded prince out of 
three kingdoms." Percy has preserved the ballad in his 
Reliques, but who remembers the air ? My Uncle Toby, 
it seems, was about the last to whistle it. 

The most popular song ever written in the British Isl- 
ands, that of Auld Lang Syne, is anonymous, and we 
know no more of the author of the music than we do of 
the author of the words. Much of Burns' great fame 
rests upon this song, in which his share amounts only to 
a few emendations. The Last Rose of Summer is said 
to be made up in great part of an old Sicilian air, orig- 
inating nobody knows when. Old Hundred, they say, 
was constructed out of fragments as old as music itself 
— strains that are as immortal as the instinct of music. 



INCONGRUITY. 205 

Home, Sweet Home was written in a garret in the Palais 
Royal, Paris, when poor Payne was so utterly destitute 
and friendless that he knew not where the next day's 
dinner was to come from. It appeared originally in a 
diminutive opera called Clari, the Maid of Milan. The 
opera is seldom seen or heard of now, but the song grows 
nearer and dearer as the years roll away. More than 
once the unfortunate author, walking the lonely streets of 
London or Paris amid the storm and darkness, hungry, 
houseless, and penniless, saw the cheerful light gleaming 
through the windows of happy homes, and heard the mu- 
sic of his own song drifting out upon the gloomy night to 
mock the wanderer's heart with visions of comfort and 
of joy, whose blessed reality was forever denied to him. 
Home, Sweet Home was written by a homeless man. 
Lamartine, in his History of the Girondists, has given an 
account of the origin of the French national air, the Mar- 
seillaise. In the garrison of Strasburg was quartered a 
young artillery officer, named Rouget de ITsle. He had 
a great taste for music and poetry, and often entertained 
his comrades during their long and tedious hours in the 
garrison. Sought after for his musical and poetical tal- 
ent, he was a frequent and familiar guest at the house of 
one Dietrich, an Alsacian patriot, mayor of Strasburg. 
The winter of 1792 was a period of great scarcity at 
Strasburg. The house of Dietrich was poor, his table 
was frugal, but a seat was always open for Rouget de 
ITsle. One day there was nothing but bread and some 
slices of smoked ham on the table. Dietrich, regarding 
the young officer, said to him with sad serenity, " Abun- 
dance fails at our boards ; but what matters that, if enthu- 
siasm fails not at our civic fetes, nor courage in the hearts 
of our soldiers. I have still a last bottle of wine in my 
cellar. Bring it," said he to one of his daughters, " and 
let us drink France and Liberty ! Strasburg should have 
its patriotic solemnity. De ITsle must draw from these 



206 LIBRARY NOTES. 

last drops one of those hymns which raise the soul of the 
people." The wine was brought and drank, after which 
the officer departed. The night was cold. De FIsle was 
thoughtful. His heart was moved, his head heated. He 
returned, staggering, to his solitary room, and slowly 
sought inspiration, sometimes in the fervor of his citizen 
soul, and anon on the keys of his instrument, compos- 
ing now the air before the words, and then the words 
before the air. He sang all and wrote nothing, and at 
last, exhausted, fell asleep, with his head resting on his 
instrument, and woke not till day-break. The music of 
the night returned to his mind like the impression of a 
dream. He wrote it, and ran to Dietrich, whom he found 
in the garden, engaged with his winter lettuces. The 
wife and daughters of the old man were not up. Die- 
trich awoke them, and called in some friends, all as pas- 
sionate as himself for music, and able to execute the 
composition of De l'lsle. At the first stanza, cheeks 
grew pale ; at the second, tears flowed ; and at last, the 
delirium of enthusiasm burst forth. The wife of Die- 
trich, his daughters, himself, and the young officer threw 
themselves, crying, into each other's arms. The hymn 
of the country was found. Executed some days after- 
ward in Strasburg, the new song flew from city to city, 
and was played by all the popular orchestras. Marseilles 
adopted it to be sung at the commencement of the sit- 
tings of the clubs, and the Marseillaise spread it through 
France, singing it along the public roads. From this 
came the name of Marseillaise. It was the song for ex- 
cited men under the fiery impulse of liberty. Those 
melodies for little children, just as immortal, owe their 
existence to circumstances just as accidental. We mean 
the melodies of Mother Goose. The story of this Iliad 
of the nursery is told as follows : The mother-in-law of 
Thomas Fleet, the editor, in 173 1, of the Boston Weekly 
Rehearsal, was the original Mother Goose — the Mother 



INCONGRUITY. 207 

Goose of the world-famous melodies. Mother Goose 
belonged to a wealthy family in Boston, where her eld- 
est daughter, Elizabeth Goose, was married by Cotton 
Mather, in 17 15, to Fleet, and in due time gave birth to 
a son. Like most mothers-in-law in our own day, the im- 
portance of Mrs. Goose increased with the appearance 
of her grandchild, and poor Mr. Fleet, half distracted with 
her endless nursery ditties, finding all other means fail, 
tried what ridicule could effect, and actually printed a 
book, with the title " Songs for the Nursery, or Mother 
Goose's Melodies for Children, printed by T. Fleet, at 
his printing house, Pudding Lane, Boston. Price, ten 
coppers." Mother Goose was the mother of nineteen 
children, and hence we may easily trace the origin of 
that famous classic, " There was an old woman who lived 
in a shoe ; she had so many children she did n't know 
what to do." 

As to the plays of the stage, we all know how some of 
them have gradually, in the long years, grown to be there, 
from additions by actors and managers, so wholly differ- 
ent from what they are in literature, that in important parts 
they would hardly be recognized as the same. Sheridan's 
Critic, with the numerous " gags " by Jack Bannister, 
King, Miss Pope, Richard Jones, Liston, Mrs. Gibbs, 
Charles Mathews, and other great actors, is a famous in- 
stance of the kind. And as to playing, Mathews says it 
is possible for a man, absurd as it may seem, to obtain 
favor with the public by merely attending to the mechan- 
ical portion of the profession, without any exertion of his 
intellect beyond committing his words to memory, and 
speaking to his " cues " at the right moment and with the 
proper emphasis. He gives a remarkable illustration of 
this strange possibility. When Douglas Jerrold's play of 
the Bubbles of the Day was produced at Covent Garden 
Theatre, there was a long-experienced actor, standing ex- 
ceedingly well with the public, and an undoubted favorite, 



208 LIBRARY NOTES. 

who played one of the parts so admirably that he met 
with unqualified success with the audience, and was a 
prominent feature in the piece, highly praised by the press, 
and complimented by the author himself, as having per- 
fectly embodied his conception. After the play had run 
for some ten or fifteen nights, he one day came to Mathews 
and asked him as a favor that he would let him have the 
manuscript of the piece for a short time. Certainly, said 
Mathews ; but what do you want it for ? Why, said he, 
I was unfortunately absent from the reading ; and I have 
not the slightest idea what it is about, or who and what 
I am in it. He had literally, according to Mathews, played 
his part admirably for many nights to the gratification of 
the public, the press, and the author ; and he had never 
even had the curiosity to inquire in what way he was 
mixed up with the plot. He had seized the instructions 
given him by Jerrold during the rehearsals, and adopted 
his suggestions so correctly that he was able to fulfill all 
the requirements of the character assigned to him without 
the least idea of what he was doing, or of the person whom 
he represented. So it would seem that ignorance is not 
always a hinderance to success ; on the contrary, it is 
sometimes the very foundation of what passes for knowl- 
edge. Take the wise doctor's remedies. They are adopted 
for the number that recover who use them, not for the 
numbers that die, who used them also. " The sun gives 
light to their success, and the earth covers their failures." 
" If your physician," says Montaigne, " does not think it 
good for you to sleep, to drink wine, or to eat such and 
such meats, never trouble yourself ; I will find you another 
that shall not be of his opinion." Heine, during the 
eight years he lay bed-ridden with a kind of paralysis, 
read all the medical books which treated of his complaint. 
" But," said he to some one who found him thus engaged, 
" what good this reading is to do me I don't know, except 
that it will qualify me to give lectures in heaven on the 



INCONGRUITY. 209 

ignorance of doctors on earth about diseases of the spinal 
marrow." What is often accepted as high moral truth is 
only a small part of what the philosopher has thought — 
the result less of faith than of skepticism ; the two being 
in about the proportion of FalstafFs bread to his sack. 

To get away from the ideal to the physical, what can 
at first blush be so absurd as the climatic changes believed 
by some to be produced by railroads ? The desert of 
Western America has been transformed into a fertile 
plain : the railroad, they say, has brought rain. No ele- 
ment, we are told, was wanting in the earth itself, nor was 
aught in excess to enforce sterility, but everywhere there 
was drought. In the hot dust nothing grew but stunted 
hardy grass and sage brush. All seemed desolation and 
utter hopelessness. Wherever irrigation was tried, its 
success exceeded expectation in developing an almost 
miraculous productiveness in the soil. No enthusiast 
dared, however, to dream of the possibility of artificial ir- 
rigation over all that enormous expanse. Rivers entering 
there would soon have been drunk up by the thirsty earth 
and sky. Yet man's work, it would seem, has irrigated 
that whole desert by unexpected means. The railroad 
brought rain. Year by year, since the Union Pacific 
Railroad has been operated through, the rain-fall had 
steadily increased until the summer of 1873, when it be- 
came, to the operators of the road, a positive nuisance. 
Icicles, paradoxical as it may seem, are formed, science 
tells us, by the process of freezing in sunshine hot enough 
to melt snow, blister the human skin, and even, when 
concentrated, to burn up the human body itself. They 
result from the fact that air is all but completely trans- 
parent to the heat rays emitted by the sun — that is, such 
rays pass through the air without warming it. Only the 
scanty fraction of rays to which air is not transparent ex- 
pend their force in raising its temperature. In the Alps, 
Tyndall tells us, when the liquefaction is copious and the 
14 



210 LIBRARY NOTES. 

cold intense, icicles grow to an enormous size. Over the 
edges (mostly the southern edges) of the chasms hangs a 
coping of snow, and from this depend, like stalactites, 
rows of transparent icicles, ten, twenty, thirty feet long, 
constituting one of the most beautiful features of the 
higher crevasses. An icicle would be incomprehensible 
if we did not know that the solar beams may pass through 
the air, and still leave it at an icy temperature. One of 
the contradictions of ice is, that, formed at a temperature 
of twenty-five to thirty degrees Fahrenheit, it is as differ- 
ent from that which is formed when the temperature has 
ranged for some time between ten degrees and one degree, 
as chalk is from granite. The ice at the lower tempera- 
ture is dense and hard as flint. It strikes fire at the prick 
of a skate. In St. Petersburg, in 1740, when masses of 
it were turned and bored for cannon, though but four 
inches thick, they were loaded with iron cannon-balls and 
a charge of a quarter of a pound of powder, and fired 
without explosion. 

The warm-blooded, fur-covered cat is just as contradic- 
tory — in one peculiarity at least. Gilbert White says, 
" There is a propensity belonging to common house-cats 
that is very remarkable ; that is, their violent fondness 
for fish, which appears to be their most favorite food : and 
yet nature in this instance seems to have planted in them 
an appetite that, unassisted, they know not how to gratify ; 
for of all quadrupeds cats are the least disposed toward 
water ; and will not, when they can avoid it, deign to wet 
a foot, much less to plunge into that element." And there 
is quite as curious a fact pertaining to the rat. Natural- 
ists say that his propensity to gnaw must not be attributed 
altogether to a reckless determination to overcome im- 
pediments. The never-ceasing action of his teeth is not 
a pastime, but a necessity of his existence. The ceaseless 
working of his incisors against some hard substance is 
necessary to keep them down, and if he did not gnaw for 



INCONGRUITY. 211 

his subsistence he would be compelled to gnaw to prevent 
his jaw being gradually locked by their rapid development. 
And there is the tortoise. The same delightful naturalist 
we have quoted had a pet one, of whose habits he made 
many curious notes. He says no part of its behavior 
ever struck him more than the extreme timidity it always 
expressed with regard to rain ; for though it had a shell 
that would secure it against the wheel of a loaded cart, 
yet did it discover as much solicitude about rain as a lady 
dressed in all her best attire, shuffling away on the first 
sprinklings, and running its head up in a corner. 

But man, at last, is the creature fullest of contradictions, 
and his vanity is at the bottom of most of them. " What 
a sensible and agreeable companion is that gentleman who 
has just left us," said the famous Charles Townshend to 
the worthy and sensible Fitzherbert ; " I never passed an 
evening with a more entertaining acquaintance in my life." 
"What could entertain you? the gentleman never opened 
his lips." " I grant you, my dear Fitz, but he listened 
faithfully to what I said, and always laughed in the right 
place." Darwin, speaking of one of his walks in New 
Zealand, says, " I should have enjoyed it more, if my 
companion, the chief, had not possessed extraordinary con- 
versational powers. I knew only three words — ' good,' 
'bad,' and 'yes;' and with these I answered all his re- 
marks, without, of course, having understood one word he 
said. This, however, was quite sufficient ; I was a good 
listener, an agreeable person, and he never ceased talking 
to me." John Chester was a delightful companion to 
Coleridge, on the same principle. This Chester, says 
Hazlitt, was one of those who was attracted to Coleridge's 
discourse as flies are to honey, or bees in swarming-time 
to the sound of a brass pan. He gave Hazlitt his private 
opinion, though he rarely opened his lips, that Coleridge 
was a wonderful man ! " He followed Coleridge into 
Germany, where the Kantian philosophers were puzzled 



212 LIBRARY NOTES. 

how to bring him under any of their categories. When 
he sat down at table with his idol, John's felicity was com- 
plete ; Sir Walter Scott's, or Blackwood's, when they sat 
down at the table with the king, was not more so. Gnce 
he was astonished," continues Hazlitt, "that I should be 
able to suggest anything to Coleridge that he did not al- 
ready know ! " " Demosthenes Taylor, as he was called 
(that is, the editor of Demosthenes), was the most silent 
man," said Dr. Johnson to Boswell, "the merest statue 
of a man, that I have ever seen. I once dined in company 
with him, and all he said during the whole time was not 
more than Richard. How a man should say only Richard, 
it is not easy to imagine. But it was thus : Dr. Douglass 
was talking of Dr. Zachary Grey, and was ascribing to 
him something that was written by Dr. Richard Grey. So, 
to correct him, Taylor said (imitating his affected senten- 
tious emphasis and nod) ' Richard.' " " Demosthenes " 
must have been " a sensible and agreeable companion." 
That one word was to the point, and was more effective 
than a dozen would have been to a man like Johnson. 
Two words, however, if we are to believe the story chroni- 
cled by John of Brompton of the mother of Thomas a 
Becket, performed a still more memorable service. His 
father, Gilbert a Becket, was taken prisoner during one of 
the Crusades by a Syrian emir, and held for a consider- 
able period in a kind of honorable captivity. A daughter 
of the emir saw him at her father's table, heard him con- 
verse, fell in love with him, and offered to arrange the 
means by which both might escape to Europe. The proj- 
ect only partly succeeded ; he escaped, but she was left 
behind. Soon afterward, however, she contrived to elude 
her attendants, and after many marvelous adventures by 
sea and land arrived in England, knowing but two English 
words, " London " and " Gilbert." By constantly repeat- 
ing the first, she was directed to the city ; and there, fol- 
lowed by a mob, she walked for months from street to 



INCONGRUITY. 213 

street, crying as she went, " Gilbert ! Gilbert ! " She at 
last came to the street in which her lover lived. The 
mob and the name attracted the attention of a servant in 
the house ; Gilbert recognized her ; and they were mar- 
ried ! But there remains one to be spoken of who gained 
immortal reputation for his sayings, who may be said to 
have never said anything at all of his own. Joe Miller, 
whose name as a wit is now current wherever the English 
language is spoken, was, when living, himself a jest for 
dullness. According to report, Miller, who was an excel- 
lent comic actor, but taciturn and saturnine, " was in the 
habit of spending his afternoons at the Black Jack, a well- 
known public-house in London, which at that time was 
frequented by the most respectable tradesmen in the 
neighborhood, who from Joe's imperturbable gravity, 
whenever any risible saying was recounted, ironically as- 
cribed it to him. After his death, having left his family 
unprovided for, advantage was taken of this badinage. A 
Mr. Motley, a well-known dramatist of that day, was em- 
ployed to collect all the stray jests then current on the 
town. Joe Miller's name was affixed to them, and from 
that day to this the man who never uttered a jest has 
been the reputed author of every jest." 



VIII. 
MUTATIONS. 

Swift left some thoughts on various subjects — acute 
and profound — which it would appear were jotted down 
at different periods of life, and in different humors. In 
his most prosperous days, when he dreamed of becoming 
a bishop, he might have written hopefully, " No wise man 
ever wished to be younger." At a much later time in 
life he might have written, sagely and sadly, " Every man 
desireth to live long, but no man would be old." We can 
imagine that he wrote the former just after he received 
the deanery of St. Patrick, and the latter just after he 
returned from the walk in the neighborhood of Dublin, 
referred to by the author of Night Thoughts. " Perceiv- 
ing he did not follow us," says Young, " I went back, and 
found him fixed as a statue, and earnestly gazing upward 
at a noble elm, which in its uppermost branches was 
much decayed. Pointing at it, he said, ' I shall be like 
that tree ; I shall die at the top.' " 

Bolingbroke, writing to Swift, says, " It is now six in 
the morning ; I recall the time — and am glad it is over 
— when about this hour I used to be going to bed sur- 
feited with pleasure, or jaded with business ; my head 
often full of schemes, and my heart as often full of anx- 
iety. Is it a misfortune, think you, that I rise at this 
hour refreshed, serene, and calm : that the past and even 
the present affairs of life stand like objects at a distance 
from me, where I can keep off the disagreeable, so as 
not to be strongly affected by them, and from whence I 
can draw the others nearer to me?" 



MUTATIONS. 215 

De Foe moralizes in memorable language : " I know 
too much of the world to expect good in it, and have 
learned to value it too little to be concerned at the evil. 
I have gone through a life of wonders, and am the sub- 
ject of a vast variety of providences. I have been fed 
more by miracles than Elijah when the ravens were his 
purveyors. I have some time ago summed up the scenes 
of my life in this distich : — 

' No man has tasted differing fortunes more ; 
And thirteen times I have been rich and poor.' 

In the school of affliction I have learnt more philosophy 
than at the academy, and more divinity than from the 
pulpit. In prison I have learnt that liberty does not con- 
sist in open doors and the egress and regress of locomo- 
tion. I have seen the rough side of the world as well as 
the smooth ; and have in less than half a year tasted the 
difference between the closet of a king and the dungeon 
of Newgate. I have suffered deeply for cleaving to prin- 
ciples, of which integrity I have lived to say, none but 
those I suffered for ever reproached me with." 

We are told by Middleton that "before Cicero left 
Sicily, at the end of his term as quaestor, he made the 
tour of the island, to see everything in it that was curi- 
ous, and especially the city of Syracuse, which had al- 
ways made the principal figure in its history. Here his 
first request to the magistrates, who were showing him 
the curiosities of the place, was to let him see the tomb 
of Archimedes, whose name had done so much honor to 
it \ but to his surprise, he perceived that they knew noth- 
ing at all of the matter, and even denied that there was 
any such tomb remaining ; yet as he was assured of it 
beyond all doubt, by the concurrent testimony of writers, 
and remembered the verses inscribed, and that there was 
a sphere with a cylinder engraved on some part of it, he 
would not be dissuaded from the pains of searching it 
out. When they had carried him, therefore, to the gate 



2l6 LIBRARY NOTES. 

where the greatest number of their old sepulchres stood, 
he observed, in a spot overgrown with shrubs and briers, 
a small column, whose head just appeared above the 
bushes, ' with the figure of a sphere and a cylinder upon 
it ; this, he presently told the company, was the thing 
they were looking for ; and sending in some men to clear 
the ground of the brambles and rubbish, he found the in- 
scription also which he expected, though the latter part 
of all the verses was effaced. Thus,' says he, ' one of the 
noblest cities of Greece, and once likewise the most 
learned, had known nothing of the monument of its most 
deserving and ingenious citizen, if it had not been dis- 
covered to them by a native of Arpinum.' " 

Anaxagoras knew the short memory of the people, and 
chose a happy way to lengthen it, and at the same time 
to perpetuate himself. When the chief persons of the 
city paid him a visit, and asked him whether he had any 
commands for them, he answered that he only desired 
that children might be permitted to play every year dur- 
ing the month in which he died. His request was re- 
spected, and the custom continued for ages. 

" Ruins," in the impressive language of Alger, " sym- 
bolize the wishes and fate of man ; the weakness of his 
works, the fleetingness of his existence. Who can visit 
Thebes, in whose crowded crypts, as he enters, a flight of 
bats chokes him with the dust of disintegrating priests 
and kings ; see the sheep nibbling herbage between the 
fallen cromlechs of Stonehenge ; or confront a dilapi- 
dated stronghold of the Middle Ages, where the fox looks 
out of the window and the thistle nods on the wall, with- 
out thinking of these things? They feelingly persuade 

him what he is Tyre was situated of old at the 

entry of the sea, the beautiful mistress of the earth, 
haughty in her purple garments, the tiara of commerce 
on her brow. Now the dust has been scraped from her 
till she has become a blistered rock, whereon the solitary 



MUTATIONS. 217 

fisher spreads his nets. A few tattered huts stand among 
shapeless masses of masonry where glorious Carthage 
stood ; the homes of a few husbandmen where voluptu- 
ous Corinth once lifted her splendid array of marble pal- 
aces and golden towers. Many a nation, proud and pop- 
ulous in the elder days of history, like Elephanta, or Mem- 
phis, is now merely a tomb and a shadowy name. Pom- 
peii and Herculaneum are empty sepulchres, which that 
fatal flight before the storm of ashes and lava cheated 
of their occupants ; the traveler sees poppies blooming 

in the streets where chariots once flashed Tigers 

foray in the palace yards of Persepolis, and camels browse 
in Babylon on the site of Belshazzar's throne ; at Baalbec, 
lizards overrun the altars of the Temple of the Sun, and 
in the sculptured friezes, here the nests of obscene birds, 
there the webs of spiders." 

" The Roman Emperor Hadrian," philosophizes Hil- 
lard, " after many years of care and conquest, with a 
marked taste for architecture, and the resources of the 
whole civilized world at his command, resolved to sur- 
round his declining life with reproductions of all the strik- 
ing objects which he had seen in the course of his world- 
wide wanderings. He selected for the site of this gigantic 
enterprise a spot singularly favorable to his objects. It 
was a range of gently undulating hills, of about three 
miles in extent, with a natural boundary, formed in part 
by a winding valley, and partly by walls of rock. On the 
east, it was overlooked by the wooded heights of the Sa- 
bine Mountains ; and, on the west, it commanded a view 
of the Campagna and the Eternal City, whose temples 
and obelisks, relieved against the golden sky of sunset, 
must have soothed the mind of its imperial master with 
thoughts of duties performed and of repose, earned by 
toil. The natural inequalities and undulations of the site, 
which furnished heights, plains, valleys, and glens, aided 
and lightened the tasks of the architect and the land- 



2l8 LIBRARY NOTES. 

scape gardener. The emperor is said to have inclosed a 
space of eight or ten miles in circuit, so that, if the state- 
ment were true, the villa and its appurtenances occupied 
an area greater than that of Pompeii. Here he set to 
work with armies of laborers and mountains of gold, and, 
in an incredibly short space of time, the ground was cov- 
ered with an amazing number of costly and extensive 
structures, which had risen like exhalations from the soil. 
Besides the imperial palace, there was a library, an acad- 
emy, a lyceum, numerous temples, one or more theatres, 
a covered walk or portico, and spacious barracks for the 
accommodation of the Praetorian guards. Besides these, 
a glen through which a stream flowed was made into a 
miniature likeness of the vale of Tempe ; a flowery plain 
was called by the name of the Elysian Fields ; and an 
immense cavern, filled with sunless waters, recalled the 

gloom of Tartarus The ruins, at the present time, 

seen hastily and without the interpretation of an intelli- 
gent guide, are a confused mass of decay, revealing very 

little of their former destination or structure A 

considerable portion of the space formerly occupied by the 
villa is now under cultivation, and nature, aided by a soft 
sky and a productive soil, has been busy in healing the 
gaping wounds of time, and covering unsightly ruin with 

a mantle of bloom and beauty The whole scene 

is now a broad page on which is stamped an impressive 
lesson of the vanity of human wishes. The great em- 
peror, even while his last workmen were gathering up 
their tools to depart, was attacked by a mortal disease ; 
and, seventy years after his death, Caracalla began the 
work of spoliation by carrying off its most costly marbles 
to decorate the baths whose ruins are in turn monuments 
to his name in Rome. A recent French traveler states 
that a species of syringa, which Hadrian brought from the 
East and planted here, still sheds its fragrance over these 
ruins ; this delicate and fragile flower, a part of the per- 



MUTATIONS. 219 

ennial life of Nature, remaining faithful to the emperor's 
memory, while stone, marble, and bronze have long since 
betrayed their trust." 

" Neither the troubles, Zenobia," mused La Bruyere, 
" which disturb your empire, nor the war which since the 
death of the king, your husband, you have so heroically 
maintained against a powerful nation, diminish anything 
of your magnificence. You have preferred the banks of 
the Euphrates to any other country, and resolved to raise 
a stately fabric there. The air is healthful and temper- 
ate ; the situation charming ; that sacred wood makes an 
awful shade on the west ; the Syrian gods, who sometimes 
dwell on earth, could not choose a finer abode. The 
plain about it is peopled with men who are constantly 
employed in shaping and cutting, going and coming, 
transporting the timber of Lebanon, brass, and porphyry. 
Their tools and engines are heard in the air ; and the 
travelers who pass that way to Arabia expect on their 
return home to see it finished with all the splendor you 
design to bestow on it, ere you or the princes your chil- 
dren make it your dwelling. Spare nothing, great queen, 
nor gold, nor the labor of the most excellent artists ; let 
the Phidiases and Zeuxises of your age show the utmost 
of their art on your walls and ceilings. Mark out vast 
and delicious gardens, whose beauty shall appear to be 
all enchantment, and not the workmanship of man. Ex- 
haust your treasures, and tire your industry on this in- 
comparable edifice, and after you have given it the last 
perfection, some grazier or other, who lives on the neigh- 
boring sands of Palmyra, enriched by taking toll on your 
rivers, shall buy with ready money this royal mansion, to 
adorn it, and make it worthy of him and his fortune." 

Gibbon thus concludes his review of the entire series 
of Byzantine emperors : " In a composition of some days, 
in a perusal of some hours, six hundred years have rolled 
away, and the duration of a life or reign is contracted to 



220 LIBRARY NOTES. 

a fleeting moment ; the grave is ever beside the throne : 
the success of a criminal is almost instantly followed by 
the loss of his prize ; and our immortal reason survives 
and disdains the sixty phantoms of kings who have 
passed before our eyes, and faintly dwell on our remem- 
brance." 

" I went to-day," said Cobbett, " to see the house I 
formerly occupied. How small ! It is always thus : the 
words large and small are carried about with us in our 
minds, and we forget real dimensions. The idea, such as 
it was received, remains during our absence from the 
object. When I returned to England in 1800, after an 
absence from the country parts of it for sixteen years, the 
trees, the hedges, even the parks and woods, seemed so 
small ! It made me laugh to hear little gutters, that I 
could jump over, called rivers ! The Thames was but a 
' creek ! ' But when, in about a month after my arrival 
in London, I went to Farnham, the place of my birth, 
what was my surprise ! Everything was become so piti- 
fully small ! . . . . There is a hill not far from the town 
called Crooksbury Hill, which rises up out of a flat in the 
form of a cone, and is planted with Scotch fir-trees. 
Here I used to take the eggs and young ones of crows 
and magpies. This hill was a famous object in the 
neighborhood. It served as the superlative degree of 
height. ' As high as Crooksbury Hill ' meant, with us, 
the utmost degree of height. Therefore the first object 
that my eyes sought was this hill. I could not believe 
my eyes ! Literally speaking, I for a moment thought 
the famous hill removed, and a little heap put in its 
stead ; for I had seen in New Brunswick a single rock, 
or hill of solid rock, ten times as big, and four or five 

times as high What a change ! What scenes I 

had gone through ! How altered my state ! I had dined 
the day before at a secretary of state's, in company with 
Mr. Pitt, and had been waited upon by men in gaudy liv- 



MUTATIONS. 221 

eries ! I had had nobody to assist me in the world. No 
teachers of any sort. Nobody to shelter me from the 
consequences of bad, and no one to counsel me to good 
behavior. I felt proud. The distinctions of rank, birth, 
and wealth, all became nothing in my eyes ; and from 
that moment — less than a month from my arrival in Eng- 
land — I resolved never to bend before them." 

" We read in the Memoirs of Moore," says a writer on 
M. Guizot, in the London Quarterly, 1854, "that in 1820 
he was present at a performance in Paris, of Tarare, an 
opera of Beaumarchais, which was written in 1787, at a 
period when the promulgation of liberal ideas, with a cer- 
tain infusion of science, was the fashion in Paris. Ac- 
cordingly, while Nature and the Genius of Heat are 
trilling in a duet the laws of gravitation, Tarare (a vir- 
tuous soldier) defends his wife from the assaults of the 
monarch of Ormuz, who, being finally defeated, kills 
himself, and Tarare is proclaimed king in his place. 
Only three years afterward Louis XVI., having be- 
come a constitutional sovereign, and Bailly (who had 
shortly to pay with his head for his patriotic illusions) 
being Maire of Paris, Tarare was not allowed to be acted 
in its original form. Beaumarchais fitted it to the altered 
circumstances, and hi its remodeled shape, Tarare be- 
comes a constitutional king. Under the Republic, Tarare 
was not allowed to be a monarch at all ; and when the 
opera was performed in 1795, the victorious soldier in- 
dignantly refuses the crown. Under Bonaparte, Tarare 
was again recast to bring it into harmony with the delu- 
sion of the hour; and lastly, when in 1820 the perform- 
ance was witnessed by Moore, Tarare, become more mon- 
archal than ever, displays his loyalty by defending the 
king of Ormuz from a popular insurrection, and ultimately 
falls with emotion at the feet of the tyrant, who has the 
magnanimity to restore his wife to him." 

St. Austin, with his mother Monica, was led one day 



222 LIBRARY NOTES. 

by a Roman prastor to see the tomb of Csesar. Himself 
thus describes the corpse : " It looked of a blue mould, 
the bone of the nose laid bare, the flesh of the nether 
lip quite fallen off, his mouth full of worms, and in his 
eye-pit a hungry toad, feasting upon the remnant portion 
of flesh and moisture : and so he dwelt in his house of 
darkness." 

A traveler in Ceylon, who visited the ruins of ancient 
Mahagam, says that one of the ruined buildings had ap- 
parently rested upon seventy-two pillars. These were 
still erect, standing in six lines of twelve columns. This 
building must have formed an oblong of three hundred 
feet by two hundred and fifty. The stone causeway 
which passed through the ruins was about two miles in 
length, being for the most part overgrown with low jungle 
and prickly cactus. The first we hear of this city is 286 
b. c. ; but we have no account of the era or cause of its 
destruction. The records of Ceylon give no satisfactory 
account of it. The wild elephants come out of the 
jungles and rub their backs against the columns of this 
forgotten temple, as the naked Indians gamble with 
forked sticks on the desolate ruins of Central America. 

But a few years sometimes change the whole face of 
a country. Sir Woodbine Parish mformed Darwin that 
during the three years' drought in Buenos Ayres, begin- 
ning in 1827, the ground being so long dry, such quanti- 
ties of dust were blown about that in the open country 
the landmarks became obliterated, and people could not 
tell the limits of their estates. 

But what shall we say of the instability of human 
greatness ? The career and end of Pompey furnish a 
striking example. " He who a few days before com- 
manded kings and consuls, and all the noblest of Rome, 
was sentenced to die by a council of slaves ; murdered 
by a base deserter; cast out naked and headless on the 
Egyptian strand ; and when the whole earth, as Velleius 



■ MUTATIONS. 223 

says, had scarce been sufficient for his victories, could 
not find a spot upon it at last for a grave. His body was 
burnt on the shore by one of his freedmen, with the 
planks of an old fishing-boat ; and his ashes, being con- 
veyed to Rome, were deposited privately by his wife Cor- 
nelia in a vault of his Alban villa." 

Aristotle, that prince of all true thinkers, loaded with 
immortal glory, was compelled to flee suddenly and by 
stealth to Chalcis, in order to save his life, and spare, as 
he said, the Athenians a new crime against philosophy. 
There, it is believed, the great man, in his old age, 
wearied with persecutions, poisoned himself. 

The venerable Hildebrand, the greatest of all the 
popes, after the herculean labors of his self-devoted and 
mighty career, crushed by an accumulation of hardships, 
said, " I have loved justice and hated iniquity \ therefore 
I die in exile." 

" The ceremony of Galileo's abjuration," says Sir Da- 
vid Brewster, in his biography of that great man, "was 
one of exciting interest and of awful formality. Clothed 
in the sackcloth of a repentant criminal, the venerable 
sage fell upon his knees before the assembled cardinals ; 
and, laying his hands upon the Holy Evangelists, he in- 
voked the divine aid in abjuring and detesting, and vow- 
ing never again to teach, the doctrine of the earth's mo- 
tion and of the sun's stability. He pledged himself that 
he would never again, either in words or in writing, prop- 
agate such heresies ; and he swore that he would fulfill 
and observe the penances which had been inflicted upon 
him. At the conclusion of this ceremony, in which he 
recited his abjuration word for word, and then signed 
it, he was conveyed, in conformity with his sentence, to 
the prison of the Inquisition." All because it had been 
said that the " sun runneth about from one end of heaven 
to the other," and that "the foundations of the earth are 
so firmly fixed that they cannot be moved." 



224 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Think of this in connection with the fact that "in five 
years Charles II. touched twenty-three thousand six hun- 
dred and one of his subjects for the evil; that the 
bishops invented a sort of heathen service for the occa- 
sion j that the unchristianlike, superstitious ceremony 
was performed in public ; and that, as soon as prayers 
were ended, the Duke of Buckingham brought a towel, 
and the Earl of Pembroke a basin and ewer, who, after 
they had made obeisance to his majesty, kneeled down 
till his majesty had washed." Dr. Wiseman, an eminent 
surgeon of that period, in writing on scrofula, says, 
" However, I must needs profess that his majesty (Charles 
II.) cureth more in any one year than all the chirurgeons 
of London have done in an age." 

And think at the same time of the trial of a mother 
and her daughter, eleven years old, before " the great 
and good Sir Matthew Hale," then Lord Chief Baron, 
for witchcraft ; and their conviction and execution at 
Bury St. Edmunds, principally on the evidence of Sir 
Thomas Browne, one of the first physicians and scholars 
of his day. 

In Fuller's Church History there is a curious fact, 
showing the power of superstition over even such a man 
as Wolsey. The great cardinal " in his life-time was in- 
formed by some fortune-tellers that he should have his 
end at Kingston. This his credulity interpreted of King- 
ston-on-Thames ; which made him always avoid the rid- 
ing through that town, though the nearest way from his 
house to the court. Afterward, understanding that he 
was to be committed by the king's express orders to the 
charge of Sir Anthony Kingston, it struck to his heart ; 
too late perceiving himself deceived by that father of lies 
in his homonymous prediction." 

But credulity seems to have had a foundation place 
in the characters of some of the world's greatest men. 
There, for instance, is Hooker, author of that great work, 



MUTATIONS. 225 

Ecclesiastical Polity, — according to Hallam "the finest 
as well as the most philosophical writer of the Eliza- 
bethan period ; " according to Lecky " the most majestic 
of English writers." Being appointed to preach a ser- 
mon at St. Paul's Cross, London, he lodged at the Shu- 
namite's house, a dwelling appropriated to preachers, 
and was skillfully persuaded by the landlady " that it was 
best for him to have a wife that might prove a nurse to 
him, such an one as might prolong his life, and make it 
more comfortable, and such an one as she could and 
would provide for him if he thought fit to marry." The 
unsuspecting young divine agreed to abide by her choice, 
which fell upon her own daughter, who proved to be not 
only "a silly, clownish woman," but a very Xantippe. 
Izaak Walton, in his biography of Hooker, thus philoso- 
phizes upon this remarkable marriage : " This choice of 
Mr. H. (if it were his choice) may be wondered at ; but 
let us consider that the prophet Ezekiel says, ' There is a 
wheel within a wheel ; ' a secret, sacred wheel of Provi- 
dence (not visible in marriages), guided by his hand, that 
* allows not the race to the swift,' nor ' bread to the wise,' 
nor good wives to good men ; and He that can bring 
good out of evil (for mortals are blind to this reason) 
only knows why this blessing was denied to patient Job, 
to meek Moses, and to our as meek and patient Mr. 
Hooker." Farther on, by way of explanation and apology, 
old Izaak quaintly says, "God and nature blessed him 
with so blessed a bashfulness, that as in his younger clays 
his pupils might easily look him out of countenance, so 
neither then, nor in his age, did he ever willingly look 
any man in the face : and was of so mild and humble a 
nature, that his poor parish clerk and he did never talk 
but with both their hats on or both off at the same time : 
and to this may be added, that though he was not pur- 
blind, yet he was short or weak sighted ; and where he 
fixed his eyes at the beginning of his sermon, there they 
15 



226 LIBRARY NOTES. 

continued till it was ended : and the reader has a liberty 
to believe, that his modesty and dim sight were some of 
the reasons why he trusted Mrs. Churchman to choose 
his wife." His anger is said to have been like a vial of 
clear water, which, when shook, beads at the top, but in- 
stantly subsides, without any soil or sediment of unchari- 
tableness. 

Nobody knows, to say truth, how much the great, mod- 
est Hooker was benefited by what appeared to his friends 
his calamitous marriage. " There is no great evil," said 
Publius Syrus, " which does not bring with it some ad- 
vantage." Calamities, we know, have often proved bless- 
ings. There are cases where blows on the head have 
benefited the brain, and produced extraordinary changes 
for the better. Mabillon was almost an idiot at the age 
of twenty-six. He fell down a stone staircase, fractured 
his skull, and was trepanned. From that moment he be- 
came a genius. Dr. Prichard mentioned a case of three 
brothers, who were all nearly idiots. One of them was 
injured on the head, and from that time he brightened 
up, and became a successful barrister. Wallenstein, too, 
they say, was a mere fool, till he fell out of a window, 
and awoke with enlarged capabilities. Here is an in- 
stance noted by Robinson in his Diary: "After dinner 
called on the Flaxmans. Mrs. Flaxman — wife of the 
sculptor — admitted me to her room. She had about a 
fortnight before broken her leg, and sprained it besides, 
by falling down-stairs. This misfortune, however, instead 
of occasioning a repetition of the paralytic stroke which 
she had a year ago, seemed to have improved her health. 
She had actually recovered the use of her hand in some 
degree, and her friends expect that she will be benefited 
by the accident." 

There is Cowper. But for his mental malady the world 
would have had much less of good poetry and fewer per- 
fect letters. The thought of a clerkship in the House of 



MUTATIONS. 227 

Lords made him insane ! " Innocent, pious, and confid- 
ing, he lived in perpetual dread of everlasting punishment : 
he could only see between him and heaven a high wall 
which he despaired of ever being able to scale ; yet his 
intellectual vigor was not subdued by affliction. What he 
wrote for amusement or relief in the midst of ' supreme 
distress,' surpasses the elaborate efforts of others made 
under the most favorable circumstances ; and in the very 
winter of his days, his fancy was as fresh and blooming 
as in the spring and morning of his existence." The Di- 
verting History of John Gilpin, the production of a single 
night, was, curious to say, written by a man who lived in 
perpetual dread of eternal punishment ; and while it was 
being read by Henderson, the actor, to large audiences in 
London, " all through Lent, at high prices," its author 
was raving mad. The ballad, which had become the town 
talk, was reprinted from the newspaper, wherein it had 
lain three years dormant. Gilpin, passing at full stretch 
by the Bell at Edmonton, was to be seen at all print-shops. 
One print-seller sold six thousand. What had succeeded 
so well in London was repeated with inferior ability, but 
with equal success, on provincial stages, and the ballad 
became in the highest degree popular before the author's 
name became known. The last reading to which Cowper 
listened appears to have been that of his own works. 
Beginning with the first volume, Mr. Johnson went through 
them, and he listened to them in silence till he came to 
John Gilpin, which he begged not to hear. It reminded 
him of cheerful days, and of those of whom he could not 
bear to think. " The grinners at John Gilpin," he said, 
" little dream what the author sometimes suffers. How 
I hated myself yesterday for having ever wrote it ! " On 
his death-bed, when the clergyman told him to confide in 
the love of the Redeemer, who desired to save all men, 
Cowper gave a passionate cry, begging him not to give 
him such consolations. To our ignorant eyes it looks 



228 LIBRARY NOTES. 

strange that the author of our best and most popular 
hymns should have thought his sins unpardonable ; should 
have believed himself already damned. 

One of Cowper's visitors and pensioners at Olney was 
a poor school-master (Teedon) who thought himself spe- 
cially favored by Providence, and to whom Cowper com- 
municated his waking dreams, and consulted, as a person 
whom the Lord was pleased to answer in prayer. This 
recalls a similar fact of the illustrious Tycho Brahe. 
When he lived in Uraniberg he maintained an idiot of the 
name of Lep, who lay at his feet whenever he sat down 
to dinner, and whom he fed with his own hand. Per- 
suaded that his mind, when moved, was capable of fore- 
telling future events, Tycho carefully marked everything 
he said. (Striking instances, it may be observed, of the 
tribute which intelligence and science unconsciously pay 
to faith.) 

It is pathetic to think, says Alger, how many great men 
have, like Homer and Milton, had the windows of their 
souls closed. Galileo, in his seventy-third year, wrote to 
one of his correspondents, " Alas ! your dear friend has 
become irreparably blind. These heavens, this earth, 
this universe, which by wonderful observation I had en- 
larged a thousand times past the belief of past ages, are 
henceforth shrunk into the narrow space which I myself 
occupy. So it pleases God \ it shall, therefore, please me 
also." Handel passed the last seven years of his life in 
total blindness, in the gloom of the porch of death. How 
he and the spectators must have felt when the great com- 
poser, in 1753, stood pale and tremulous, with his sightless 
eyeballs turned toward a tearful concourse of people, 
while his sad song from Samson, " Total eclipse, no sun, 
no moon," was delivered ! Leigh Hunt said of Handel : 
He was the grandest composer that is known to have ex- 
isted, wielding, as it were, the choirs of heaven and earth 
together. Mozart said of him, that he struck you, when- 



MUTATIONS. 229 

ever he pleased, with a thunderbolt. His hallelujahs 
open the heavens. He utters the word " wonderful," as 
if all their trumpets spoke together. 

Beethoven was afflicted with " dense and incurable 
deafness " long before he had composed his greatest 
works. He said, " I was nigh taking my life with my own 
hands. But art held me back. I could not leave the 
world until I had revealed what lay within me." He 
occupied for a long time a room in a remote house on a 
hill, and was called the Solitary of the Mountain, where 
he heard, no doubt, more distinctly " the voices," than if 
he had been blest with the best of ears. " When he pro- 
duced his mighty opera, Fidelio, it failed. In vain he 
again modeled and remodeled it. He went himself into 
the orchestra and attempted to lead it ; and the pitiless 
public of Vienna laughed." His work so far surpassed 
the appreciation of many of his contemporaries as to be 
condemned as the vagaries of a madman. Haydn and 
Mozart, as was said, had perfected instrumental music in 
form ; it remained for deaf Beethoven to touch it, so that 
it became a living soul. 

It does seem that God in his mystery has sometimes 
put out the eyes of poets and stopped the ears of musi- 
cians to admit them to glimpses of his own glories and 
whisper to them his own harmonies. Homer and Milton 
had inward poetic visions which light and sight alone 
never gave to man. Beethoven, unable from defective 
hearing to conduct an orchestra, produced celestial har- 
monies out of the silence of divine meditation. 

The philanthropy of John Howard was so prodigious 
that it rendered him incapable of ordinary enjoyments. 
His faculties were so absorbed by his great humanity that 
he was voted a bore by the liveliest and cleverest of his 
contemporaries. " But the mere men of taste," says John 
Foster, "ought to be silent respecting such a man as 
Howard ; he is above their sphere of judgment. The in- 



230 



LIBRARY NOTES. 



visible spirits, who fulfill their commissions of philan- 
thropy among mortals, do not care about pictures, stat- 
ues, and public buildings; and no more did he, when 
the time in which he must have inspected and admired 
them would have been taken from the work to which he 
had consecrated his life. The curiosity which he might 
feel was reduced to wait till the hour should arrive when 
its gratification should be presented by conscience, which 
kept a scrupulous charge of all his time, as the most sa- 
cred duty of that hour. If he was still at every hour, 
when it came, fated to feel the attractions of the fine arts 
but the second claim, they might be sure of their revenge ; 
for no other man will ever visit Rome under such a des- 
potic consciousness of duty as to refuse himself time for 
surveying the magnificence of its ruins. Such a sin 
against taste is far beyond the reach of common saint- 
ship to commit. It implied an inconceivable severity of 
conviction, that he had one thing to do, and that he who 
would do some great thing in this short life must apply 
himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces 
as to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, 
looks like insanity." Look a little over his wonderful 
life, by the aid of a few facts set down by the encyclo- 
pedist : At about the age of twenty-five he experienced a 
severe attack of illness, and upon his recovery testified 
his gratitude to the woman who had nursed him, and 
who was nearly thirty years his senior, by marrying her. 
Moved by the accounts of the horrors of the earthquake 
at Lisbon, he embarked for that place with a view of do- 
ing something to alleviate the calamity. On the voyage 
he was taken prisoner by a French privateer and carried 
into Brest, where he became a witness of the inhuman 
treatment to which prisoners of war were subjected. 
Designing to visit the new lazaretto of Marseilles, he 
endeavored in vain to procure a passport from the 
French government, which was incensed against him for 



MUTATIONS. 231 

having published a translation of a suppressed French 
account of the interior of the Bastile. He therefore 
traveled through the country in various disguises, and 
after a series of romantic adventures and several narrow 
escapes from the police, who were constantly on his 
track, succeeded in his purpose. He proceeded thence 
to Malta, Zante, Smyrna, and Constantinople, visiting 
prisons, pest-houses, and hospitals, and in the two latter 
cities gratuitously dispensing his medical services, often 
with great benefit to the poor. The freedom with which 
he exposed his person in infected places, whither his 
attendants refused to follow him, was characteristic of 
his fearless and self-sacrificing character; but as if by 
a miracle he escaped all contagion. His most daring 
act, however, has yet to be recorded. Feeling that he 
could not speak with authority on the subject of pest- 
houses until he had experienced the discipline of one, 
he went to Smyrna, sought out a foul ship, and sailed 
in her for Venice. After a voyage of sixty days, during 
which by his energy and bravery he assisted the crew 
in beating off an attack of pirates, he arrived at his des- 
tination, and was subjected to a rigorous confinement in 
the Venetian lazaretto, under which his health suffered 
severely. In the preface to one of his numerous works, 
he announced his intention to pursue his work, observing, 
" Should it please God to cut off my life in the prosecu- 
tion of this design, let not my conduct be imputed to 
rashness or enthusiasm, but to a serious conviction that 
I am pursuing the path of duty." He died of camp-fever, 
which he contracted from a patient at Kherson, Russia, 
on the Black Sea, having expended nearly the whole of 
his large fortune in various benefactions. In a speech 
to the electors of Bristol, Edmund Burke thus eloquently 
sums up the public services of Howard : " He has visited 
all Europe, not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces, 
or the stateliness of temples ; not to make accurate meas- 



232 LIBK^RY NOTES. 

urement of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor to form 
a scale of the curiosity of modern art; not to collect 
medals or collect manuscripts ; but to dive into the 
depths of dungeons ; to plunge into the infections of hos- 
pitals ; to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain ; to 
take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and 
contempt; to remember the forgotten, to attend to the 
neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to compare and col- 
late the distresses of all men in all countries." 

In persons of genius, defects sometimes appear to take 
the place of merits, and weaknesses to act the part of 
auxiliaries. The " plastic nature of the versatile faculty " 
is such that common laws do not govern it, nor common 
standards judge it. " Men of genius," says an acute his- 
torian and critic of literature and literary men, "have 
often resisted the indulgence of one talent to exercise 
another with equal power ; some, who have solely com- 
posed sermons, could have touched on the foibles of so- 
ciety with the spirit of Horace or Juvenal ; Blackstone 
and Sir William Jones directed that genius to the austere 
studies of law and philology which might have excelled 
in the poetical and historical character. So versatile is 
this faculty of genius, that its possessors are sometimes 
uncertain of the manner in which they shall treat their 
subject, whether to be grave or ludicrous. When Brebeuf, 
the French translator of the Pharsalia of Lucan, had 
completed the first book as it now appears, he at the 
same time composed a burlesque version, and sent both 
to the great arbiter of taste in that day, to decide which 
the poet should continue. The decision proved to be 
difficult." Hence it is that men of genius and their pro- 
ductions are often enigmas to the world. " The hero," 
says Carlyle, " can be poet, prophet, king, priest, or what 
you will, according to the kind of world he finds himself 
born into. I confess I have no notion of a truly great 
man that could not be all sorts of men. The poet who 



MUTATIONS. 233 

could merely sit on a chair, and compose stanzas, would 
never make a stanza worth much. He could not sing the 
heroic warrior, unless he himself were at least a heroic 
warrior too. I fancy there is in him the politician, the 
thinker, legislator, philosopher ; in one or the other de- 
gree, he could have been, he js, all these Shake- 
speare, — one knows not what he could not have made 
in the supreme degree." 

"It is notorious," says Macaulay, "that Niccolo Ma- 
chiavelli, out of whose surname they have coined an epi- 
thet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a syn- 
onym for the devil, was through life a zealous republican. 
In the same year in which he composed his manual of 
kingcraft, he suffered imprisonment and torture in the 
cause of public liberty. It seems inconceivable that the 
martyr of freedom should have designedly acted as the 
apostle of tyranny." The real object and meaning of his 
celebrated book, The Prince, have been subjects of dis- 
pute for centuries. One old critic says, " Machiavel is a 
strenuous defender of democracy; he was born, educated, 
and respected under that form of government, and was a 
great enemy to tyranny. Hence it is that he does not fa- 
vor a tyrant : it is not his design to instruct a tyrant, but 
to detect his secret attempts, and expose him naked and 
conspicuous to the poor people. Do w r e not know there 
have been many princes such as he describes ? Why are 
such princes angry at being immortalized by his means ? 
This excellent author's design was, under the show of 
instructing the prince, to inform the people." Another 
says, " I must say that Machiavel, who passed everywhere 
for a teacher of tyranny, detested it more than any man 
of his time ; as may easily appear by the tenth chapter 
of the first book of his Discourses, in which he expresses 
himself very strongly against tyrants." Nardi, his con- 
temporary, calls his works "panegyrics upon liberty." 
Bayle says, "The Jesuit Porsevin, who had not read The 



234 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Prince, was nevertheless the cause of its being con- 
demned by the Inquisition. He charges Machiavel with 
such things as are not in The Prince. His charges were 
made upon passages from a work, published anonymously, 
entitled Anti-Machiavel, and not from The Prince. The 
Prince was published about the year 15 15, and dedicated 
to Lorenzo de' Medici, nephew to Leo X. It did not 
prejudice the author with this pope, who nevertheless 
was the first who threatened those with excommunication 
that read a prohibited book ! " 

A critic says of La Rochefoucauld : " The author of the 
Maxims was apparently the least selfish public man of 
his land and age. Saith one of his biographers, not un- 
truly, ' He gave the example of all the virtues of which 
he would appear to contest the existence.' He ridicules 
bravery as a madness ; and as Madame de Maintenon, 
who could have had no predilection for his system, curtly 
observes, 'he was, however, very brave.' The proofs of 
his bravery do not rest on Madame de Maintenon's as- 
sertion. A scorn of danger, preeminently French, as it 
became the inheritor of so great a French name to ex- 
hibit, was sufficiently shown at the siege of Bordeaux 
and the battle of St. Antoine. Madame de Sevigne 
speaks of La Rochefoucauld with an admiration which 
she rarely bestows except on her daughter ; and says that 
in his last agonizing illness he thought more of his neigh- 
bor than himself. Cardinal de Retz, in the portrait he 
has left of the brilliant duke, — a portrait certainly not 
flattered, — tells us that this philosopher, who reduced all 
human motives to self-interest, did not feel the little in- 
terests which were never his weak point, and did not un- 
derstand the great interests which were never his strong 
point; and, finally, this acute critic of contemporaneous 
celebrities, after assuring us that La Rochefoucauld ' had 
never been a good party-man,' tells us that in the rela- 
tions of common life La Rochefoucauld was the honest- 
est man of the age." 



MUTATIONS. 235 

Sir John Denham, according to Count Grammont, 
was " one of the brightest geniuses England ever pro- 
duced for wit and humor, and for brilliancy of composi- 
tion ; satirical and free in his poems, he spared neither 
frigid writers nor jealous husbands, nor even their wives ; 
every part abounded with the most poignant wit, and 
the most entertaining stories ; but his most delicate and 
spirited raillery turned generally against matrimony ; and 
as if he wished to confirm, by his own example, the truth 
of what he had written in his youth," he married, at the 
age of seventy-nine, Miss Brook, aged eighteen, a favor- 
ite of King Charles II., and mistress of his brother, the 
Duke of York, afterward King James II. " As no per- 
son entertained any doubt of his having poisoned her 
(on account of jealousy), the populace of his neighbor- 
hood had a design of tearing him in pieces as soon as he 
should come abroad ; but he shut himself up to bewail 
her death, until their fury was appeased by a magnificent 
funeral, at which he distributed four times more burnt 
wine than had ever been drank at any burial in England." 

(You remember the plea Denham urged in behalf of 
old George Wither, the Puritan poet, when he was taken 
prisoner by the Cavaliers, and a general disposition was 
displayed to hang him at once. Sir John saved his life by 
saying to Charles, " I hope your majesty will not hang 
poor George Wither, for as long as he lives it can't be 
said that I am the worst poet in England.") 

Literature is full of such facts as at first blush appear 
incredible. Consider, that " although the soil of Sweden 
is not rich in either plants or insects, and many of its 
feathered tribes are but temporary visitants, leaving it at 
stated periods in quest of milder climes, nevertheless it 
was amidst this physical barrenness that the taste of Lin- 
naeus for his favorite pursuit broke out almost from his 
earliest infancy, and found the means, not only of its 
gratification, but of laying a basis of a system which 



236 LIBRARY NOTES. 

soon spread its dominion over the whole world of science. 
Almost within the Arctic circle, this enthusiast of nature 
felt all those inspirations which are generally supposed 
to be the peculiar offspring of warmer regions. He trav- 
eled over the greater part of Lapland, skirting the boun- 
daries of Norway, and returning to Upsala by the Gulf 
of Bothnia, having passed over an extent of about four 
thousand miles. Nothing but the enthusiasm of genius 
would have made him, night and day, wade the cold 
creeks and treacherous bogs, and climb the bleak mount- 
ains of Lapland — eating little but fish, unsalted, and 
crawling with vermin. He considered his labor amply re- 
munerated by the information he had gained, and the 
discovery of new plants in the higher mountains, with 
the payment of his expenses, amounting to about ten 
pounds ! " 

And reflect, that " on a bulk, in a cellar, or in a glass- 
house, among thieves and beggars, was to be found the 
author of The Wanderer, the man of exalted sentiments, 
extensive views, and curious observations ; the man whose 
remarks on life might have assisted the statesman, whose 
ideas of virtue might have enlightened the moralist, whose 
eloquence might have influenced senates, and whose deli- 
cacy might have polished courts." 

And see what Bishop Burnet, in his History of his Own 
Times, says of the vile Lord Rochester : " In the last 
year of his life I was much with him, and have writ a 
book of what passed between him and me : I do verily 
believe he was then so changed that if he had recovered 
he would have made good all his resolutions." Of this 
book, mentioned by the bishop, Dr. Johnson said, It is 
one " which the critic ought to read for its eloquence, the 
philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety." 

Soame Jenyns, a friend of Johnson and Goldsmith and 
Reynolds, is thus spoken of by Cumberland : " He came 
into your house at the very moment you had put upon 



MUTATIONS. 237 

your card ; he dressed himself to do your party honor in 
all the colors of the jay ; his lace indeed had long since 
lost its lustre, but his coat had faithfully retained its cut 
since the days when gentlemen wore embroidered figured 
velvet, with short sleeves, boot-cuffs, and buckram, skirts ; 
as nature had cast him in the exact mould of an ill-made 
pair of stiff stays, he followed her so close in the fashion 
of his coat that it was doubted if he did not wear them : 
because he had a protuberant wen just under his poll, he 
wore a wig, that did not cover above half his head. His 
eyes were protruded like the eyes of the lobster, who 
wears them at the end of his feelers, and yet there was 
room between one of these and his nose for another wen 
that added nothing to his beauty ; yet I heard this good 
man very innocently remark, when Gibbon published his 
history, that he wondered anybody so ugly could write a 
book ! " 

It has been remarked as an interesting fact, that Wil- 
berforce at the age of twenty-five, and Wendell Phillips at 
the same age, were the two persons who seemed the least 
likely of all their respective contemporaries to become 
world-renowned as advocates of the cause of antislavery. 
Wilberforce was returned to parliament at twenty-one, 
when, according to his biographer, " he became the idol of 
the fashionable world, dancing at Almack's, and singing 
before the Prince of Wales." At twenty-five, he abandoned 
his gayeties, entered upon a new life, and took up the great 
cause which he advocated during the remainder of his 
long career. Wendell Phillips, at the age of twenty-two, 
was a Boston lawyer, aristocratic, wealthy, handsome, pol- 
ished, and sought after ; colonel of a city militia company, 
and a lover of blooded horses, of fencing and boxing. 
He was born on Beacon Street, and his father was one of 
the most popular mayors Boston ever had. At Harvard 
University, where he graduated, he was president of the 
" exclusive society " known as the Gentleman's Club, and 



2$8 LIBRARY NOTES. 

in fact he was the leader of the aristocratic party among 
the students. At twenty-five he abandoned his practice 
of law, gave up the fashionable world, and espoused the 
cause of the slave. 

Robespierre, anarchist and philanthropist, and Fred- 
erick of Prussia, despot and philosopher, were both bitter 
and vitriolic natures ; yet both, in their youth, exceeded 
Exeter Hall itself in their professions of universal benefi- 
cence. Frederick indeed wrote early in life a treatise 
called the Anti-Machiavel, which was, says his biographer, 
" an edifying homily against rapacity, perfidy, arbitrary 
government, unjust war ; in short, against almost every- 
thing for which its author is now remembered among 
men." 

The grand Descartes, modestest of men, who, observes 
Bulwer, wished to live in a town where he should not be 
known by sight, felt so keen an anguish at the snubbings 
and censures his writings procured him, that he meditated 
the abandonment of philosophy and the abjuration of his 
own injured identity by a change of name. Happily for 
mankind, some encouraging praises came to his ears, and 
restored the equilibrium of his self-esteem, vanity (if all 
pleasure in approbation is to be so called) reconciling 
him once more to the pursuit of wisdom. 

Gray's diffidence, or fastidiousness, according to Hazlitt, 
was such as to prevent his associating with his fellow- 
collegians, or mingling with the herd, till at length, like 
the owl, shutting himself up from society and daylight, he 
was hunted and hooted at like the owl whenever he 
chanced to appear, and was even assailed and disturbed 
in the haunts in which " he held his solitary reign." He 
was driven from college to college, and was subjected to 
a persecution the more harassing to a person of his indo- 
lent and retired habits. But he only shrunk the more 
within himself in consequence, read over his favorite 
authors, corresponded with his distant friends, was terri- 



MUTATIONS. 239 

fied out of his wits at the bare idea of having his portrait 
prefixed to his works, and probably died from nervous 
agitation at the publicity into which his name had been 
forced by his learning, taste, and genius. Such was the 
author of the immortal Elegy, which Daniel Webster died 
repeating, and of which Wolfe said he would rather be 
the author than be conqueror of Quebec. 

Washington Irving's modesty and diffidence did not 
make him shut " himself up from society and daylight," 
but it made him a stranger to many of his neighbors, and 
even to the boys about Sunnyside. It will be a surprise 
to many to know that one morning he was ordered out of 
a field he was crossing — belonging to a neighbor of his, 
a liquor dealer, who threatened, if he found the " old vag- 
abond " on his premises again, he would set his dogs on 
him ! It will also be a surprise to know that the dis- 
tinguished author of The Sketch Book was a confessed 
orchard thief. Once, when picking up an apple under a 
tree in his own orchard, he was accosted by an urchin of 
the neighborhood, who, not recognizing him as the pro- 
prietor, offered to show him a tree where he could " get 
better apples than those." " But," urged the boy, " we 
must take care that the old man don't see us." " I went 
with him," said Irving, " and we stole a dozen of my own 
apples ! " 



IX. 

PARADOXES. 

Is there anything more curious or remarkable in fiction 
than the simple fact expressed by Thucydides, that igno- 
rance is bold and knowledge reserved ? or that by Thomas 
Fuller, that learning has gained most by those books by 
which the printers have lost ? or that by Pascal, that it is 
wonderful a thing so obvious as the vanity of the world 
is so little known, and that it is a strange and surprising 
thing to say that seeking its honors is a folly ? or that by 
John Selden, that of all actions of a man's life his mar- 
riage does least concern other people, yet of all actions 
of his life 't is most meddled with by other people ? or 
that by Goldsmith, that the most delicate friendships are 
always most sensible of the slightest invasion, and the 
strongest jealousy is ever attendant on the warmest re- 
gard ? or that by Hazlitt, that every man, in his own 
opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of hu- 
manity? or that by Emerson, that the astonishment of 
life is the absence of any appearance of reconciliation 
between the theory and practice of life ? or that by Fos- 
ter, that millions of human beings are at this very hour 
acting in violation of the laws of goodness, while those 
laws are clearly admitted, not only as impositions of 
moral authority but as the vital principles of their own 
true self-interest ? or that by Prescott, that in every coun- 
try the most fiendish passions of the human heart are 
those kindled in the name of religion ? Strange ! that 
labor is so scarce in China that vast tracts of land lie 
waste because there are no laborers to reclaim them. 



PARADOXES. 24I 

That in the pontifical army, not long before Victor Eman- 
uel, Spain — " the bones of whose children for centuries 
had whitened every battle-field where she found it neces- 
sary to defend her religion" — was represented by but 
thirty-eight soldiers, while Holland — " which protected 
the Reformation by its Princes of Orange, and introduced 
liberty of religious opinion into the modern world" — was 
represented by hundreds and hundreds of volunteers. 
That the best building in Iceland is the jail at Reikiavik, 
which, during the many years since its erection, has never 
contained a prisoner. That in the Arctic region a smaller 
proportion of fuel is consumed than in any other hab- 
itable part of the globe. That the next use of the May- 
flower, after carrying the Pilgrims, was to transport a 
cargo of slaves to the West Indies. That the plant papy- 
rus, which gave its name to our word paper — first used 
for writing between three and four thousand years ago — 
of more importance in history than cotton and silver 
and gold — once so common in Egypt — has become so 
scarce there that Emerson in his late visit searched in 
vain for it. That house-building, which ought to be 
among the most perfect of the arts, after the experience 
and efforts of myriads in every generation, has produced 
no stereotyped models of taste and convenience. That 
the founder and editor of one of the great London peri- 
odicals never wrote a line for his journal ; and when he 
died, the review which he had built up by his individual 
ability made not the slightest mention of the event. That 
the three books which have been so widely read, and 
which have exercised incalculable influence upon morals 
and politics, — The Imitation of Christ, The Whole Duty 
of Man, and the Letters of Junius, — are of unknown or 
disputed authorship. That the Bible, — incomparably the 
wisest and best book, the Book of books, the guide of 
life, the solace in death, the way to heaven, — is so little 
read by the many and so little understood by the few. 
16 



242 LIBRARY NOTES. 

That the one subject (religion) which is " by general con- 
sent proscribed in general society is that which by gen- 
eral consent is allowed to be the most important, and 
which one might therefore suppose to be the most inter- 
esting." That the brain, in subordination to the mind, 
the physical centre of all sensation, is insensible to the 
wounds which are torture to the skin, and which wounds 
the brain alone enables us to feel. (" It is as insensible," 
says Sir Charles Bell, " as the leather of our shoe, and 
a piece may be cut off without interrupting the patient in 
the sentence that he is uttering.") That the heart, to 
which we refer our joys, our sorrows, and our affections, 
when grasped with the fingers, gives no information of 
the fact to the possessor, unmistakably responding at the 
same time to the varied emotions of his mind. (The fa- 
mous Dr. Harvey examined, at the request of Charles I., 
a nobleman of the Montgomery family, who, in conse- 
quence of an abscess, had a fistulous opening into the 
chest, through which the heart could be seen and han- 
dled. The great physiologist was astonished to find it 
insensible. "I then brought him," he says, "to the 
king that he might behold and touch so extraordinary a 
thing, and that he might perceive, as I did, that when he 
touched the outer skin, or when he saw our fingers in the 
cavity, this young nobleman knew not that we touched 
the heart.") That one of our modern English poets, who 
has written lyrics so passionate as to be hounded down 
for their immorality, has so lived, according to a fellow- 
poet, as never to have kissed any one but his mother. 
That the one man who can read the Eliot Bible is getting 
tired of his distinction, just as a veteran poet, it is de- 
clared, hated to hear praised one of the productions of 
his youth, at eighty not having surpassed, in popular esti- 
mation, a school-boy poem, written at eighteen. That the 
man whom Walter consulted in the management of the 
Times newspaper, and who in Walter's absence, according 



PARADOXES. 



243 



to Robinson, decided in the dernier resort, was at the 
time, and until the end of his life, an inhabitant of the 
King's Bench Prison, and when he frequented Printing 
House Square it was only by virtue of a day rule. (Combe 
was his name : Old Combe, as he was familiarly called. 
He was the author of the famous Letters of a Noble- 
man to his Son, generally ascribed to Lord Lyttelton. 
He was a man of fortune when young, and traveled in 
Europe, and even made a journey with Sterne. Walter 
offered to release him from prison by paying his debts. 
This he would not permit, as he did not acknowledge the 
equity of the claim for which he suffered imprisonment. 
He preferred living on an allowance from Walter, and 
was, he said, perfectly happy.) How difficult it is to re- 
alize that Dr. Johnson, the great Cham of English litera- 
ture, spent more than one half of his days in penury; 
that the "moral, pious Johnson," and the "gay, dissi- 
pated Beauclerc," were companions ; that they ever spent 
a whole day together, " half-seas over," strolling through 
the markets, cracking jokes with the fruit and fish women, 
on their way to Billingsgate. It is hard to believe that 
that great moralist ever wandered whole nights through 
the streets of London, with the unfortunate, gifted Sav- 
age, too miserably poor to hire lodgings. And it is still 
harder to believe that the best biography of that great 
man, and the best biography in our language, was written 
by a gossiping, literary bore — the " bear-leader to the 
Ursa Major," as Irving calls him — whom Johnson pre- 
tended to despise, and of whom he once said, "if he 
thought Boswell intended to write his (Johnson's) life 
he would take Boswell's." We wonder that the great, 
strong-minded Luther ever flung an inkstand at the devil's 
head. We cannot conceive that Wesley and Johnson 
and Addison believed in ghosts. It looks strange to us 
that Socrates, who taught the doctrines of the one Su- 
preme Being and the immortality of the soul, bowed 



244 LIBRARY NOTES. 

down to a multiplicity of idols ; and after he had swal- 
lowed the fatal hemlock, directed the sacrifice of a cock 
to yEsculapius. We cannot credit the fact that Marlbor- 
ough, at the moment he was the terror of France and the 
glory of Germany, was held under the finger of his wife by 
the meanest of passions, avarice. We utterly refuse to 
believe the complaint of Burns, the greatest of lyric poets, 
that he "could never get the art of commanding respect." 
It seems incredible that Goldsmith ever " talked like poor 
Poll," when he "wrote like an angel." It appears strange 
enough that Sir George Mackenzie wrote an elegant and 
eloquent treatise in favor of solitude, while living a most 
active life ; and still more strange that his arguments were 
triumphantly answered by Evelyn, who passed his days in 
tranquillity and solitude. We only believe when we are 
compelled by authority, that Tycho Brahe changed color, 
and his legs shook under him, on meeting with a hare or 
a fox. That Dr. Johnson would never enter a room with 
his left foot foremost. That Caesar Augustus was almost 
convulsed by the sound of thunder, and always wanted to 
get into a cellar, or under-ground, to escape the dreadful 
noise. That Talleyrand trembled when the word death 
was pronounced. That Marshal Saxe ever screamed in 
terror at the sight of a cat. That the smell of fish sent 
Erasmus into a fever. That Scaliger shivered at the 
sight of water-cress. That Boyle was convulsed at the 
falling of water from a tap. That Peter the Great could 
never be persuaded to cross a bridge ; and though he 
tried to master the terror, he failed to do so. That By- 
ron would never help any one to salt at the table, nor be 
helped himself. That an air that was beneficial to Schiller 
acted upon Goethe like poison. ("I called on him one 
day," said Goethe to Soret, " and as I did not find him 
at home, and his wife told me that he would soon return, 
I seated myself at his work-table to note down various 
matters. I had not been seated long before I felt a 



PARADOXES. 245 

strange indisposition steal over me, which gradually in- 
creased, until at last I nearly fainted. At first I did not 
know to what cause I should ascribe this wretched and, 
to me, unusual state, until I discovered that a dreadful 
odor issued from a drawer near me. When I opened it, 
I found to my astonishment that it was full of rotten 
apples. I immediately went to the window and inhaled 
the fresh air, by which I felt myself instantly restored. 
In the meantime his wife had reentered, and told me that 
the drawer was always filled with rotten apples, because 
the scent was beneficial to Schiller, and he could not live 
or work without it.") That Queen Elizabeth issued proc- 
lamations against excessive apparel, leaving three thou- 
sand changes of dress in the royal wardrobe. That Bayle, 
the faithful compiler of impurities, " resisted the corrup- 
tion of the senses as much as Newton." That Smollett, 
who has so grossly offended decency in his novels, had 
an immaculate private character. That Cowley, who 
boasts with so much gayety of the versatility of his pas- 
sion amongst so many sweethearts, wanted the confidence 
even to address one. That Seneca philosophized so 
wisely and eloquently upon the blessings of poverty and 
moderate desires, while usuriously lending his seven 
millions, and writing his homilies on a table of solid gold. 
That Sir Thomas More, who, in his Utopia, declares that 
no man should be punished for his religion, was a fierce 
persecutor, racking and burning men at the stake for 
heresy. That Young, the author of the sombre Night 
Thoughts, was known as the gayest of his circle of ac- 
quaintance. That Moliere, the famous French humorist 
and writer of comedies, bore himself with habitual seri- 
ousness and melancholy. That he married an actress, 
who made him experience all those bitter disgusts and 
embarrassments which he himself played off at the thea- 
tre. That the cynicism and bitterness exhibited in the 
writings of Rousseau were in consequence of an unfort- 



246 LIBRARY NOTES. 

unate marriage to an ill-bred, illiterate woman, who ruled 
him as with a rod of iron. That Addison's fine taste in 
morals and in life could suffer the ambition of a courtier 
to prevail with himself to seek a countess, who drove him 
contemptuously into solitude and shortened his days. 
That the impulsive and genial Steele married a cold, pre- 
cise Miss Prue, as he called her, from whom he never 
parted without bickerings. That Shenstone, while sur- 
rounding himself with the floral beauties of Paradise, ex- 
citing the envy and admiration and imitation of persons 
of taste throughout England, lived in utter wretchedness 
and misery. That Swift, with all his resources of wit 
and wisdom, died, to use his own language, " in a rage, 
like a poisoned rat in a hole." That the thoughtful, cast- 
iron essays of John Foster were originally written as love 
epistles to the lady who became his wife. That the only 
person who could make George Washington laugh was 
an officer in the army so obscure in rank and character 
as not to be even mentioned in popular history. That 
the man whom Daniel Webster pronounced the best con- 
versationalist he ever knew, is now unknown or forgot- 
ten outside of his neighborhood. That the pious Cow- 
per attempted suicide ; and had as intimate associate 
the swearing Lord Chancellor Thurlow, — with whom, he 
confesses, he spent three years, " giggling and making 
giggle." That Lord Chancellor Eldon, who, while simple 
John Scott, son of a Newcastle coal-fitter, ran away with 
Bessy Surtees, daughter of a prosperous banker of the 
same town, and who was so proud of the exploit that he 
never tired of referring to it, when his eldest daughter, 
Lady Elizabeth, gave her hand, without his consent, to an 
ardent lover of respectable character and good education, 
but not of much wealth, permitted years to roll away be- 
fore he would forgive her. That not long after the elope- 
ment referred to, while a law student at Oxford, having 
been appointed to read to the class at a small salary, the 



PARADOXES. 247 

lectures of one of the professors who was then absent in 
the East Indies, it happened that the first lecture he had 
to read was upon the statute (4 & 5 P. & M. c. 8) " Of 
young men running away with maidens." (" Fancy me," 
he said, "reading, with a hundred and forty boys and 
young men all giggling.") That Lord Chancellor Thur- 
low, who was never married at all, was so outraged at the 
love marriage, against his consent, of his third and favor- 
ite daughter, that though he became reconciled to her, he 
never would consent to see her husband. That, accord- 
ing to John Lord Campbell, so many of the most impor- 
tant points in the law of real property have been settled 
in suits upon the construction of the wills of eminent 
judges. That " the religious, the moral, the immaculate " 
Sir Matthew Hale, when chief justice of the king's bench, 
allowed the infamous Jeffreys, who "was not redeemed 
from his vices by one single solid virtue," to gain, in the 
opinion of Roger North, "as great an ascendant over 
him as ever counsel had over a judge." That the gentle 
Charles and Mary Lamb were confined in a mad-house, 
and that the latter cut the throat of her mother at the 
dinner-table. That Tasso lamented the publication of 
Jerusalem Delivered, and that its publication was the one 
great cause of his insanity. That Thomson, the poet of 
the Seasons, composed so much of his classic and vigor- 
ous verse in bed ; or was seen in Lord Burlington's gar- 
den, with his hands in his waistcoat pockets, biting off the 
sunny sides of the peaches. That King Solomon, who 
wrote so wisely of training children, had so wicked a son 
as Rehoboam. That the good stoic, Marcus Aurelius, of 
proverbial purity, had so doubtful a wife as Faustina, and 
so vicious a son as Commodus. That that good old Ro- 
man emperor, whose Meditations rank with the best works 
of the greatest moralists, breathing and inculcating the 
spirit of Christianity, was the bitter persecutor of the Chris- 
tians in Gaul. That his graceless heir, Commodus, left 



248 LIBRARY NOTES. 

the Christians wholly untroubled, through the influence of 
his mistress Marcia. That the English-reading world is 
directly indebted to the Reign of Terror — the horrors of 
Robespierre's tyranny — for the most popular translation 
of St. Pierre's sweet story of Paul and Virginia. That 
the author of the Marseillaise first heard of the great 
fame of his piece in the mountains of Piedmont, when 
fleeing from France as a political refugee ; and upon the 
return of the Bourbons to power wrote an anthem which 
is characterized as the most anti-republican ever penned. 
That that ode to temperance, The Old Oaken Bucket, 
was written by Woodworth, a journeyman printer, under 
the inspiration of brandy. That so many of the exquisite 
letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu were destroyed by 
her mother, who "did not approve that she should dis- 
grace her family by adding to it literary honors." That 
the famous speech of Pitt, in reply to Walpole's taunt of 
being " a young man," was composed by Dr. Johnson. 
That Johnson, looking at Dilly's edition of Lord Chester- 
field's miscellaneous works, laughed and said, " Here are 
now two speeches ascribed to him, both of which were 
written by me : and the best of it is, they have found out 
that one is like Demosthenes, and the other like Cicero." 
That many of the sermons of famous contemporaneous 
clergymen were the productions of the same laborious 
Grub Street drudge, forty or more of which have been re- 
claimed and published, and conceded to have been writ- 
ten by the inexhaustible Johnson. That the only paper 
of The Rambler which had a prosperous sale, and may be 
said to have been popular, was one which Johnson did 
not write — No. 97, written by Richardson. That the 
essays of The Rambler, elaborate as they appear, were 
written rapidly, seldom undergoing revision, whilst the 
simple language of Rousseau, which seems to come flow- 
ing from the heart, was the slow production of painful 
toil, pausing on every word, and balancing every sentence. 



PARADOXES. 249 

That Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, 
which has the free and easy flow of extemporaneous elo- 
quence, was polished with extraordinary care, — more 
than a dozen proofs being worked off and destroyed, 
according to Dodsley's account, before he could please 
himself. That the winged passages in Curran's speeches, 
which seem born of the moment, were the results of pains- 
taking, protracted labor. (" My dear fellow," said he to 
Phillips, "the day of inspiration has gone by. Everything 
I ever said which was worth remembering, my de bene 
esses, my white horses, as I call them, were all carefully 
prepared.") That the Essay on Man, according to Lord 
Bathurst, "was originally composed by Lord Bolingbroke, 
in prose, and Pope did no more than to put it into verse." 
That those brilliant wits and prolific dramatists, Peele, 
Greene, and Marlowe, the associates of Shakespeare, to 
whom the great dramatist was so much indebted, were all 
wretched and unsuccessful, — the first dying in utter want, 
the second of excessive pickled herring, at the point nearly 
of starvation, the third being stabbed in the head in a 
drunken brawl at a tavern by his own dagger in his own 
hand. That Shakespeare married at eighteen, had three 
children at twenty, removed to London at twenty-three, 
begun writing plays at twenty-seven, and, a little more 
than twenty years after, returned to his native town, rich 
and immortal. That but a few signatures — differently 
spelled — is all of his handwriting that has been preserved. 
That so many critics should believe, and some ingenious 
books have been printed to prove, that the authorship of 
the plays of Shakespeare belongs to Bacon — the only 
man then living, they claim, who knew enough to write 
them. That the great Bacon was unable to grasp the 
great discoveries of his time — rejecting the Copernican 
system to the last, and treating not only with incredulity, 
but with the most arrogant contempt, the important dis- 
coveries of Gilbert about the magnet. That Apuleius, 



250 LIBRARY NOTES. 

author of the Metamorphosis of the Golden Ass (a para- 
phrase, according to Bayle, of what he had taken from 
Lucian, as Lucian had taken it from Lucius, one of the 
episodes of which — Psyche — furnished Moliere with mat- 
ter for one of his dramas, and La Fontaine materials for 
a romance), who did not, to use his own language, "make 
the least scruple of expending his whole fortune in acquir- 
ing what he believed to be more valuable, a contempt of 
it," married a woman more than twice his own age, thir- 
teen years a widow, to procure for himself, as he acknowl- 
edged, "a large settlement, and an easy condition of life." 
That Pythagoras, the first of the ancient sages who took 
the name of philosopher ; who made himself so illustrious 
by his learning and virtue ; who proved so useful in reform- 
ing and instructing the world ; whose eloquence moved 
the inhabitants of a great city, plunged in debauchery, to 
avoid luxury and good cheer, and to live according to the 
rules of virtue ; who prevailed upon the ladies to part 
with their fine clothes, and all their ornaments, and to 
make a sacrifice of them to the chief deity of the place ; 
who engaged his disciples to practice the most difficult 
things, making them undergo a novitiate of silence for at 
least two years, and extending it to five years for those 
whom he knew to be more inclined to speak, — peremp- 
torily ordered his disciples to abstain from eating beans, 
choosing himself rather, as some authorities have it, to be 
killed by those that pursued him, than to make his escape 
through a field of beans, so great was his respect for or 
abhorrence of that plant. That Luther, the greatest of 
the reformers, and Baxter, the greatest of the Puritans, 
and Wesley, the greatest religious leader of the last 
century, believed in witchcraft. That Dr. Johnson, who 
thought Swift's reputation greater than he deserved, ques- 
tioning his humor, and denying him the authorship of the 
Tale of a Tub, could take into his confidence, and rever- 
ence for his piety, George Psalmanazar, who deceived the 



PARADOXES. 251 

world for some time by pretending to be a native of the 
island of Formosa, to support which he invented an alpha- 
bet and a grammar. ("I should," said Johnson, "as 
soon think of contradicting a bishop.") That Coleridge 
was able to depict Mont Blanc and the Vale of Chamouni 
at sunrise in such an overpowering manner, when he had 
never seen the Alps ; while half-oriental Malta and clas- 
sical Italy, both of which he had seen, gave him no fruits 
of poetry. That Schiller wrote his William Tell without 
ever seeing any of the glories of Lake Lucerne. That 
Scott, who told how to see " fair Melrose aright," never 
saw the famous Abbey by moonlight. (Talking of Scott 
at a dinner-party, Moore said, " He was the soul of hon- 
esty. When I was on a visit to him, we were coming up 
from Kelso at sunset, and as there was to be a fine moon, I 
quoted to him his own rule for seeing ' fair Melrose aright,' 
and proposed to stay an hour and enjoy it. ' Bah ! ' said 
Scott, ' I never saw it by moonlight.' " " The truth was," 
says Sir David Brewster, " Scott would not go there for 
fear of bogles.") That Lalla Rookh, rich, melodious, 
and glowing with a wealth of imagery which wearies by 
its very excess, is the production of one who never visited 
the people or scenes he therein describes. (So true, nev- 
ertheless, were its pictures of Eastern life that Colonel 
Wilks, the historian of British India, could not believe 
that Moore had never traveled in the East; and the 
compliment which Luttrell paid him, when he told him 
that his " lays are sung .... by moonlight in the Persian 
tongue along the streets of Ispahan," is literally true, the 
work having been translated into Persian, and read with 
avidity among many Oriental nations.) That Kant, who 
startled an Englishman with a description of Westminster 
Bridge, so minutely detailed that his listener in amaze- 
ment asked him how many years he had lived in Lon- 
don, was never out of Prussia — scarcely out of Konigs- 
berg. That Barry Cornwall, although the author of one of 



252 LIBRARY NOTES. 

the most stirring and popular sea songs in the language — 
The sea, the sea, the open sea! — was very rarely upon the 
tossing element, having a great fear of being made ill by it. 
(" I think he told me," said a visitor, " that he had never 
dared to cross the Channel even, and so had never seen 
Paris. He said, like many others, he delighted to gaze 
upon the waters from a safe place on land, but had a 
horror of living on it even for a few hours. I recalled to 
his recollection his own lines — 'I'mon the sea ! I'mon 
the sea ! I am where I would ever be ; ' and he shook his 
head, and laughingly declared I must have misquoted his 
words, or that Dibdin had written the piece and put Barry 
Cornwall's signature to it.") That Michelet, who wrote 
a book on The Sea, had a like horror of it. (" I love the 
sea," he said, " but as in the case of a crowd, I love it 
at a distance.") That Vathek, that splendid Oriental 
tale, was written by a young man of twenty-two who had 
never visited the countries whose manners he so vividly 
described ; and that of all the glories and prodigalities of 
the English Sardanapalus, his slender romance, the work 
of three days, is the only durable memorial. That Beck- 
ford's father, while Lord Mayor of London, became es- 
pecially famous for a speech that was never delivered — 
the speech in reply to the king, written after the event by 
Home Tooke, and engraved on the pedestal of a statue 
of Beckford erected in Guildhall. That Michel Angelo, 
unconsciously, laid the first stone of the Reformation. 
(History tells us that Julius II. gave him an unlimited 
commission to make a mausoleum, in which their mutual 
interests should be combined. The artist's plan was a 
parallelogram, and the superstructure was to consist of 
forty statues, many of which were to be colossal, and 
interspersed with ornamental figures and bronze basso- 
rilievos, besides the necessary architecture, with appro- 
priate decorations to unite the composition into one stu- 
pendous whole. To make a fitting place for it, the pope 



PARADOXES. 253 

determined to rebuld St. Peter's itself ; and this is the 
origin of that edifice, which took one hundred and fifty 
years to complete, and is now the grandest display of 
architectural splendor that ornaments the Christian world. 
To prosecute the undertaking, money was wanted, and 
indulgences were sold to supply the deficiency of the 
treasury ; and a monk of Saxony, opposing the authority 
of the church, produced this singular event, that whilst 
the most splendid edifice which the world had ever seen 
was building for the Catholic faith, the religion to which 
it was consecrated was shaken to its foundation.") That 
the erection of one of the pyramids has been ascribed 
to a Pharaonic princess, of great beauty, who, like As- 
pasia and Thargelia, became ambitious in her intimacies. 
(The story is that she was one day taunted by her father 
with the inutility of the admiration that she excited. Pyr- 
amid-building was then the fashion in the family, and she 
vowed that she would leave behind her a monument of 
the power of her charms as durable as her august rela- 
tions did of the power of their armies. The number of 
her lovers was increased by all those who were content to 
sacrifice their fortunes for her smiles. The pyramid rose 
rapidly; with the frailty of its foundress, the massive 
monument increased ; her lovers were ruined, but the fair 
architect became immortal, and found celebrity long after- 
ward in Sappho's song.) That Gulliver's Travels, the 
severest lampoon upon humanity, is the favorite fairy tale 
of the nursery. That the distinction of the wreath of 
poet's laurel which crowned the heads of Petrarch and 
Tasso, in both cases was obtained by inferior productions : 
Scipio Africanus and Gerusalemme Conquistata. That 
Napoleon, with " a million armed men under his command, 
and half Europe at his feet, sat down in rage and affright 
to order Fouche to send a little woman over the frontiers 
lest she should say something about him for the drawing- 
rooms of Paris to laugh at." That Faraday, who at first 



254 LIBRARY NOTES. 

begged for the meanest place in a scientific workshop, at 
last declined the highest honor which British science was 
capable of granting. That the Jews of Amsterdam, exiles 
from Spain and Portugal, who owed their existence to 
flight from repeated persecutions, persecuted Spinoza, 
excommunicating him with "the anathema wherewith 
Joshua cursed Jericho, with the curse which Elisha laid 
upon the children, and with all the curses which are 
written in the law." That the son of Charles Wesley, 
born and bred in Methodism, and bound to it by all the 
strongest ties of pride and prejudice, became a Papist. 
That Cowper was mad so great a part of his life, when 
he is the sanest of English poets : of " fine frenzy " in his 
writings there is little or none. That Burke, who, in his 
youth, " wrote on the emotions produced by mountains and 
cascades ; by the masterpieces of painting and sculpture ; 
by the faces and necks of beautiful women, in the style of 
a parliamentary report," in his old age, " discussed treat- 
ies and tariffs in the most fervid and brilliant language of 
romance." That Lord Brougham, when chancellor, on the 
bench, hearing cases, wrote to Sir David Brewster several 
letters on light, one of them fourteen pages long. That a 
fourth part of Chalmers's Astronomical Discourses, which 
rivaled the Waverley novels in popularity, were penned 
in a small pocket-book, in a strange apartment, where he 
was liable every moment to interruptions ; for it was, we 
are told, at the manse of Balmerino, disappointed in not 
finding the minister at home, and having a couple of 
hours to spare — and in a drawing-room at the manse of 
Kilmany, with all the excitement of meeting for the first 
time, after a year's absence, many of his former friends 
and parishioners — that he penned paragraph after para- 
graph of a composition which, as his son-in-law and biog- 
rapher, Dr. Hanna, says, bears upon it the aspect of high 
and continuous elaboration. That the author of Auld 
Robin Gray kept the authorship of her immortal ballad a 



PARADOXES. 255 

secret for fifty years. That the title of The Man of Feel- 
ing adhered to Mackenzie ever after the publication of 
that novel ; the public fancying him a pensive, sentimental 
Harley, whereas he was, according to Cockburn, a hard- 
headed, practical man, as full of worldly wisdom as most 
of his fictitious characters are devoid of it. That Dryden, 
who was personally more moral than any of the reigning 
wits at the commencement of the Restoration, was, in the 
beginning of his career, the most deliberately and unnat- 
urally coarse as a writer — absolutely toiling and laboring 
against the grain of his genius, to be sufficiently obscene 
to please the town. That three great wits — Gay, Pope, 
and Arbuthnot — joined in the production of a play 
which was condemned the first night it was acted. That 
Abernethy, who was so bold in the practice of his profes- 
sion, suffered for so many years from extreme diffidence 
in the lecture-room — " an unconquerable shyness, a dif- 
ficulty in commanding at pleasure that self-possession 
which was necessary to open his lecture ; " and that much 
as he sometimes forgot the courtesy due to his private 
patients, he was never unkind to those whom charity had 
confided to his care. (Leaving home one morning for the 
hospital when some one was desirous of detaining him, 
he said, " Private patients, if they do not like me, can go 
elsewhere ; but the poor devils in the hospital I am bound 
to take care of.") That Godwin, who wrote against mat- 
rimony, was twice married ; and while he scouted all com- 
monplace duties, was a good husband and kind father. 
That Mrs. Radcliffe had never been in Italy when she 
wrote The Mysteries of Udolpho, yet her paintings of 
Italian scenery, and of the mountains of Switzerland, for 
truth and richness of coloring, have never been surpassed 
by poet or painter — not even by Byron. That Professor 
Wilson, whose fame in great part rests upon Noctes Am- 
brosianae, was indebted to Lockhart for the idea, who 
wrote the first of those famous papers, and gave them 



256 LIBRARY NOTES. 

their name. (" I have known Lockhart long," said Wil- 
son to a visitor ; " we used to sup together with Black- 
wood, and that was the real origin of the Noctes. ' At 
Ambrose's ? ' ' At Ambrose's.' ' But is there such a tavern 
really ? ' • Oh, certainly. Anybody will show it to you. It 
is a small house, kept in an out-of-the-way corner of the 
town, by Ambrose, who is an excellent fellow in his way, 
and has had a great influx of custom in consequence of 
his celebrity in the Noctes. We were there one night 
very late, and had all been remarkably gay and agreeable. 
'What a pity,' said Lockhart, 'that some short-hand writer 
had not been here to take down the good things that 
have been said at this supper.' The next day he pro- 
duced a paper called Noctes Ambrosianae, and that was 
the first. I continued them afterward.") That in Robes- 
pierre's desk, after his death, were found David's plans 
of academies for infancy and asylums for age : " being 
just about to inaugurate the Reign of Love when the con- 
spiracy against him swept him down the closing abyss of 
the Reign of Terror." That Lamartine, the French orator, 
poet, and political leader, when at the zenith of his pop- 
ularity, was rejected as a witness in court where he had 
offered himself, the reason of the rejection being that in 
his youth he had been convicted of a theft. That Mallet, 
although pensioned for the purpose, never, according to 
Dr. Johnson, wrote a single line of his projected life of 
Marlborough, — groping for materials, and thinking of it, 
till he exhausted his mind. That Robert Morris, the 
superintendent of finance during the American Revolu- 
tion, who, on his personal responsibility, borrowed large 
sums of money for the use of the government, which, on 
account of the known state of the treasury, could not 
have been procured in any other way ; who refused the 
post of secretary of the treasury offered to him by Wash- 
ington — naming Alexander Hamilton for the station — 
in his old age, having lost his fortune, was confined in a 



PARADOXES. 257 

Philadelphia prison, for debt. That in America, in the 
Province of Pennsylvania, it was enacted by the Coun- 
cil, William Penn presiding, that the laws should " not be 
printed ; " and William Bradford was summoned before the 
Governor and Council for printing the Charter or Frame 
of Government of the Province • and Joseph Growden, 
who caused the printing of the same, with some remarks 
thereon, was censured by Governor Blackwell, " not only 
for that it was false, but for that the Proprietor (William 
Penn) had declared himself against the use of the printing- 
press." That Beau Brummell, who was for many years the 
associate of royalty and leader of fashion in England, 
died, poverty-stricken and miserable, in a French hospital 
for lunatic mendicants. That the great and good Dr. John- 
son, "that majestic teacher of moral and religious wis- 
dom," when he was in Edinburgh, although personally 
acquainted with the celebrated Dr. Robertson, declined 
going to hear him preach, because he "would not be seen 
in a Presbyterian church ; " and upon being asked by 
Boswell where John Knox was buried, burst out, " I hope 
in the highway." That Wordsworth earnestly defended 
the Church Establishment, saying he would shed his 
blood for it, when he had confessed that he knew not 
when he had been in a church in his own country. (" All 
our ministers," he said, " are so vile.") That the vanity 
of Sir Philip Francis, in the opinion of Moore, led him 
to think that it was no great addition to his fame to have 
the credit of Junius, having done, according to his own 
notion, much better things. (" This," said the poet, 
" gets over one of the great difficulties in accounting for 
the concealment; and it must have been, at all events, 
either some very celebrated man who could dispense 
with such fame, or some very vain man who thought he 
could.") That August von Kotzebue, "the idol of the 
mob," was despised if not hated by the great poets of his 
country. (" One of his plays, The Stranger," said an 
17 



258 LIBRARY NOTES. 

eminent Englishman, " I have seen acted in German, 
English, Spanish, French, and, I believe, also in Ital- 
ian.") That Lavater, with all his real and pretended 
knowledge of human nature, was duped by Cagliostro. 
That Hogarth had the impression, which his reputation 
as a satirist could never disturb, that historical painting 
was his true vocation. That the mild Melancthon ap- 
proved of the burning of Servetus. That Joseph Scali- 
ger, who perfectly understood thirteen languages, was 
deeply versed in almost every branch of literature — per- 
haps one of the greatest scholars that any age has pro- 
duced — found so much perplexity, not in acquiring, but 
in communicating his knowledge, that sometimes, like 
Nero, he wished he had never known his letters. That 
Chillingworth, the constant study of whose works was 
recommended by Locke, " for attaining the way of right 
reasoning," and of whom it was affirmed that he had 
" such extraordinary clear reason, that if the great Turk 
or devil could be converted, he was able to do it," con- 
tracted, according to Lord Clarendon, " such an irresolu- 
tion and habit of doubting, that at last he was confident 
of nothing." That Gray's Elegy, taking the author's own 
word for it, was not intended for the public ; the poet's 
sole ambition being to gratify a few of his friends ; his 
own family, even, were not made a party to his writings, 
and his fond mother lived and died in ignorance of his 
immortal verse. That Playfair, when racked on his 
death-bed with pain, and a relation wishing to amuse him 
by reading one of Scott's novels, of which he was very 
fond, dissuaded it, saying, he would rather try the Prin- 
cipia. That Horace Walpole, who was greedy to excess 
of praise, and keenly sensitive to criticism, professed a 
strong aversion to being considered a man of letters ; 
and that with all his avowed contempt for literary fame, 
left fair copies of his private correspondence, with copi- 
ous notes, to be published after his decease. That Mir- 



PARADOXES. 259 

abeau, who came into the world with " a huge head, a 
pair of grinders, one foot twisted, and tongue-tied, dis- 
figured when three years old by confluent small-pox," 
called, as he grew up, a " monster," a " disheveled bully," 
" as ugly as the nephew of Satan," turned out to be the 
Demosthenes of France, and the idol of beautiful Parisian 
women. That Sanson, the hereditary French executioner, 
who officiated at the decapitation of Louis XVI., founded, 
before he died, a perpetual anniversary mass for the re- 
pose of the monarch's soul ; and wrote his Memoirs in 
the style of a philanthropist, whom fate had condemned 
to officiate at the guillotine. That Rousseau, the chief 
article of whose rather hazy creed was the duty of uni- 
versal philanthropy, fancied himself the object of all 
men's hatred. That Cowper, who held that the first duty 
of man was the love of God, fancied himself the object 
of the irrevocable hatred of his Creator. That the very 
name of the Cross was forbidden by the French Repub- 
lic at the very time when it had proclaimed unbounded 
religious freedom. That the charge of plagiarism against 
Sterne rests in great part upon his plagiarizing an invec- 
tive against plagiarism. That George Crabbe gave the 
leisure of more than twenty of his ripest years to writing 
three novels, which he afterward burned. That Fran- 
cois Huber, who wrote the extraordinary Treatise on the 
Economy of Bees, which for general information on the 
subject has never been superseded, was from the six- 
teenth year of his age totally blind, — all the curious re- 
marks and inferences involved in his observations being 
founded on fifty years of careful researches which he 
directed others, and particularly a favorite servant, to 
make. That eighteen years elapsed after the time that 
Columbus conceived his enterprise before he was enabled 
to carry it into effect, — most of that time being passed 
in almost hopeless solicitation, amidst poverty, neglect, 
and taunting ridicule ; when " Amerigo Vespucci, the 



260 LIBRARY NOTES. 

pickle-dealer at Seville, who went out, in 1499, a subal- 
tern with Hojeda, and whose highest naval rank was 
boatswain's mate in an expedition that never sailed, man- 
aged in this lying world to supplant Columbus, and bap- 
tize half the earth with his dishonest name." That Mon- 
taigne, who considered cruelty " the extreme of all vices," 
was a friend of the Guises and of the blood-stained Mont- 
luc : he was also for many years a member of a parlia- 
ment which had much innocent blood on its head, and 
always spoke with reverence and affection of those who 
carried out the St. Bartholomew. That La Fontaine, who 
in his Fables " makes animals, trees, and stones talk," 
was in his conversation proverbially dull and stupid. 
That Corneille, whom La Bruyere describes as " plain, 
timorous, and tiresome in his conversation," " taking one 
word for another, and judging not of the goodness of his 
own writings but by the money they brought him," in his 
books is "as great as Augustus, Pompey, Nicomedes, 
and Heraclius ; he talks like a king ; is a politician and 
a philosopher ; he undertakes to make heroes speak and 
act ; he describes the Romans, and they are greater and 
more Romans in his verse than in their history." That 
John Howard, " the philanthropist " and prison reformer, 
introduced the system of solitary confinement, and rec- 
ommended its application to refractory boys. (" For 
which," said the gentle Charles Lamb, " I could spit on 
his statue.") That Bruce, the traveler, after all his perils 
by flood and by field, from wars, from wild beasts, from 
deserts, from savage natives, broke his neck down his 
own staircase at home, owing to a slip of the foot, while 
seeing some visitors out whom he had been entertaining. 
That Diogenes, who was so fond of expressing his con- 
tempt for money, in his younger days was driven out of 
the kingdom of Pontus for counterfeiting the coin. That 
the mighty Dr. Johnson was at times so languid as not to 
be able to distinguish the hour upon the clock. That the 



PARADOXES. 26l 

ready and voluminous De Quincey, during the four years 
he was "under the Circean spells of opium," seldom 
could prevail on himself to write even a letter • an an- 
swer of a few words to any that he received was the ut- 
most that he could accomplish ; and that, often, not until 
the letter had lain weeks, or even months, on his writing- 
desk. That out of the name of Epicurus was coined a 
synonym for indulgence and sensuality, when that virtu- 
ous philosopher " placed his felicity not in the pleasures 
of the body, but the mind, and tranquillity thereof ; " who 
"was contented with bread and water;" and when he 
would feast with Jove, " desired no other addition than a 
piece of Cytheridian cheese." That Phidias made his 
sitting statue of Jupiter so large " that if he had risen 
up he had borne up the top of the temple." That Can- 
ova, whenever the conversation turned upon sculpture, 
exhibited " a freshly-bedaubed tablet," " with a smile of 
paternal pride." That Goethe undervalued himself as a 
poet, claiming only superiority over his " century " in 
" the difficult science of colors." That Jerrold was am- 
bitious to write a treatise on natural philosophy. That 
Paul Jones, the " hero of desperate sea-fights," was 
enamored of Thomson's Seasons. That Bonaparte, who 
"overran Europe with his armies," "recreated himself 
with the wild rhapsodies of Ossian." That John Wesley, 
who "set all in motion," was himself (as described by 
Robert Hall) " perfectly calm and phlegmatic " — " the 
quiescence of turbulence." That Persius, whose satires 
are most licentious, sharp, and full of bitterness, is de- 
scribed as " very chaste, though a beautiful young man : 
sober, as meek as a lamb, and as modest as a young vir- 
gin." That Luis de Camoens, the greatest of the Portu- 
guese poets, for a long time was supported by a devoted 
Javanese servant, Antonio, who collected alms for him 
during the night, and nursed him during the day. That 
Paulo Borghese, pronounced almost as good a poet as 



262 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Tasso, was master of fourteen trades, and died because he 
could get employment in none. That Bentivoglio, " whose 
comedies will last with the Italian language," having dis- 
sipated a noble fortune in acts of charity and benevo- 
lence, and fallen into misery in his old age, was refused 
admittance into a hospital which he himself had erected. 
That Demosthenes " threw down his arms when he came 
within sight of the enemy, and lost that credit in the 
camp which he gained in the pulpit." That Socrates, by 
the oracle adjudged to be the wisest of mortals, " when 
he appeared in the attempt of some public performance 
before the people," " faltered in the first onset ; " and 
" did not recover himself, but was hooted and hissed 
home again." That Plato, the philosopher, was " so 
dashed out of countenance by an illiterate rabble as to 
demur, and hawk, and hesitate, before he could get to the 
end of one short sentence." That Theophrastus was 
"such another coward, who, beginning to make an ora- 
tion, was presently struck down with fear, as if he had 
seen some ghost or hobgoblin." That Isocrates was so 
bashful and timorous, that though he taught rhetoric, yet 
he could never have the confidence to speak in public. 
That Cicero, that master of Roman eloquence, "begun 
his speeches with a low, quivering voice, just like a 
school-boy afraid of not saying his lesson perfect enough 
to escape whipping." That Pope, who had the courage 
in his Dunciad to attack a whole generation of scholars 
and wits, acknowledged his inability to face a half-dozen 
persons to make a statement or relate an incident of con- 
siderable length. That Plutarch, the greatest of biog- 
raphers, is without a biography, — none of the eminent 
Roman writers who were his contemporaries even men- 
tion his name. That of Correggio, who delineated the 
features of others so well, there exists no authentic por- 
trait. That of Roman ianus, whom Augustine speaks of 
as the greatest genius that ever lived, there is nothing 



PARADOXES. 263 

known but his name. That the epitaph of Gordianus, 
though written in five languages, proved insufficient to 
save him from oblivion. That Domitian, after he had 
possessed himself of the Roman Empire, turned his de- 
sires upon catching flies. That Hazlitt, "because his 
face was as pale and clear as marble,'' was " pointed at as 
the * pimpled Hazlitt ; ' " and " because he never tasted 
anything but water," was "held up as an habitual gin- 
drinker and a sot." That Robert Burns in early life was 
thought to be insensible to music. (Murdock, the teacher 
of Burns and his brother Gilbert, says that he " tried to 
teach them a little sacred music, but found this impracti- 
cable, there being no music in either of their souls. As 
for Robert, his ear was so completely dull that he could 
not distinguish one tune from another, and his voice was 
so untunable that he could not frame a note, and was left 
behind by all the boys and girls of the school.") That 
Sir Isaac Newton, though so deep in algebra and flux- 
ions, could not, according to Spence, readily make up a 
common account, and whilst he was master of the mint, 
used to get somebody to make up the account for him. 
That Socrates, according to Plato, gave occasion of 
laughter, at the expense of his own reputation, to the 
Athenians, for having never been able to sum up the 
votes of his tribe to deliver it to the council. That 
Prime Minister Gladstone, upon being asked how he 
employed his mind when duty compelled him to sit on 
the bench of the ministers while a tory was delivering 
himself of a dull three hours' harangue, made answer, 

"Last evening, when Mr. was speaking, I turned 

Rock of Ages into the Greek, and had half an hour to 
spare." That the great and wise and pious Chalmers so 
far adopted and became impressed with the views of Mal- 
thus as to urge the expediency of a restraint upon mar- 
riage, and that the same be " inculcated upon the peo- 
ple as the very essence of morality and religion by every 



264 LIBRARY NOTES. 

pastor and instructor throughout England." That The 
Admirable Crichton, master of a dozen languages, after 
disputing for six hours with eminent doctors of Padua on 
topics of science, delighting the assembly as much by his 
modesty as by his wonderful learning and judgment, at 
the conclusion, gave an extemporaneous oration in praise 
of ignorance with so much ingenuity that he reconciled 
his audience to their inferiority. That the Duke of Marl- 
borough, who, while an ensign of guards, received from 
the Duchess of Cleveland, then favorite mistress of 
Charles II., five thousand pounds, with which he bought 
an annuity for his life of five hundred pounds, — the 
foundation of his subsequent fortune, — afterward, when 
he was famous as well as rich, and the Duchess was 
wretched and necessitous, " refused the common civility 
of lending her twenty guineas." That although Sir Isaac 
Newton was of opinion that he " excelled particularly in 
making verses," no authentic specimen of his poetry has 
been preserved. That the first public speech of John 
Randolph, three hours in length, and which established 
his reputation as an orator, was made in reply to the last 
ever delivered by the venerable Patrick Henry, — the for- 
mer in his twenty-sixth year, a self-announced candidate 
for Congress, and the latter in his sixty-third year, the 
candidate of George Washington for a place in the Vir- 
ginia legislature. That but a few years after John Brown's 
defeat and execution in Virginia, Congress enacted a law 
and the president approved it, by which a portion of the 
Harper's Ferry buildings, including the famous engine- 
house, so nobly defended by the old hero, and to capture 
which from his little garrison Robert E. Lee and the 
United States marines had to be sent for, was presented 
by the government as a free gift to the Storer College, an 
institution expressly designed for the education of colored 
men. That Henry A. Wise, who, as governor of Virginia, 
hung John Brown, a few years afterward, fled Richmond, 



PARADOXES. 265 

the capital of Virginia, at the head of a Confederate divis- 
ion of white troops, closely followed by a division of loyal 
black troops, singing, " John Brown's body lies moulder- 
ing in the grave, but his soul is marching on." That a 
daughter of John Brown taught a free school of eman- 
cipated slave children in the deserted drawing-room of 
Henry A. Wise. That about the same time, at Lump- 
kin's Jail, which was the slave-market, there was estab- 
lished a theological seminary for colored young men. 
That Richard Realf, one of John Brown's trusted men, 
was appointed assessor of internal revenue for the district 
of Edgefield, South Carolina. That the first Confederate 
officer in South Carolina who officially met an officer of 
colored troops under a flag of truce was Captain John C. 
Calhoun. That one of Jefferson Davis's old slaves be- 
came a lessee of Jefferson Davis's old plantation. That 
Foote, the celebrated actor, died with the dropsy, never 
in his life, as he said, having drank a drop of water. 
That the great Neander, sometimes called the " second 
John," — " the son of thunder and the son of love," — 
had his mind first turned in the direction in which he 
afterward found truth and peace, by a passage in Plu- 
tarch's Pedagogue. That Plutarch, who wrote so volumi- 
nously and excellently upon morals, great personages, 
and great influences, made no mention in any of his books 
of Christ or Christianity. (" If we place his birth," says 
Archbishop Trench, "at about the year a. d. 50, then 
long before he began to write, St. Peter and St. Paul 
must have finished their course. All around him — at 
Rome, where he dwelt so long ; in that Greece where the 
best part of his life was spent ; in Asia Minor, with which 
Greece was in constant communication ; in Macedonia 
— there were flourishing churches. Christianity was ev- 
erywhere in the air, so that men unconsciously inhaled 
some of its influences, even where they did not submit 
themselves to its positive teaching. But for all this, no 



266 LIBRARY NOTES. 

word, no allusion of Plutarch's, testifies to his knowledge 
of the existence of these churches, or to the slightest 
acquaintance on his part with the Christian books." 
Suetonius, a contemporary of Plutarch, calls the Chris- 
tians "a sort of people who held a new and impious super- 
stition." Pliny, another contemporary, pronounces the 
Christian religion " a depraved, wicked, and outrageous 
superstition ; " Tacitus, " a foreign and deadly supersti- 
tion.") That John Stuart Mill, who found time and space 
in his autobiography to make careful lists of the incredi- 
ble number of books he read between the ages of three 
and fourteen, to note the languages and sciences he ac- 
quired in the same time, as well as his associations and 
relations with his father, his brothers, and his sisters ; who 
accepted his wife, during her life-time, as his divinity, and, 
after her death, confessed her memory to have been his 
religion, — omitted to say one word about his mother. 
That Jonathan Edwards, the great theologian and thinker, 
— in the opinion of Robert Hall, " the greatest of the 
sons of men," — never had the degree of doctor of divin- 
ity or doctor of laws conferred on him, while they were 
showered on scores of his commonplace contemporaries. 
That Sir John Suckling and Richard Lovelace, so famous 
as courtiers and poet cavaliers, the pets of the king and 
the people, the much admired and adored by the female 
sex, died in wretchedness and despair, — the former tak- 
ing poison, and the latter dying in rags in a miserable 
alley in London. That Milton, advanced in years, blind, 
and in misfortune, entered upon the composition of his 
immortal epic, achieving it in six years. That Scott, also 
advanced in years, his private affairs in ruin, undertook 
to liquidate, by intellectual labors alone, a debt of more 
than half a million of dollars, nearly accomplishing it in 
the same time. That Dr. Lardner published a treatise to 
prove that a steamboat could never cross the Atlantic 
(the steamship Sirius, which crossed soon after, carrying 



PARADOXES. 267 

over his pamphlet), and staked his reputation as a man 
of science to a committee of the House of Commons that 
no railway train could ever be propelled faster than ten 
miles in an hour, as the slightest curve would infallibly 
throw it off the rails. That Babinet, the French calcula- 
tor, also risked his reputation upon the declaration that 
no telegram would ever be transmitted through the Atlan- 
tic to America. That Renous, a German collector in 
natural history, having left in a house in San Fernan- 
dino, Chili, some caterpillars under charge of a girl to 
feed that they might turn into butterflies, was arrested 
upon returning to the house, his extraordinary conduct 
having been rumored through the town till it reached the 
padres and governor, who consulted together and deter- 
mined to punish the pernicious heresy. That Socrates 
learned music, Cato the Greek language, Plutarch Latin, 
and Dr. Johnson Dutch, after they were seventy years 
old. That Robert Hall sought relief in Dante from the 
racking pains of spinal disease ; and Sydney Smith re- 
sorted to the same poet for comfort and solace in his old 
age. That De Foe, the author of two hundred and ten 
books and pamphlets — some of them immortal — died 
insolvent. That Sheridan got Woodfall to insert in his 
paper a calumnious article, and neglected to answer it 
afterward, as he intended — expending, according to 
Moore, all his activity in assisting the circulation of the 
poison, and not having industry enough left to supply 
the antidote. That Hugh Miller, who had such healthy 
views of life, as shown in his autobiography, voluntarily 
left it by means of a pistol. That Lloyd, one of the early 
friends and literary associates of Lamb and Coleridge, 
took lodgings at a working brazier's shop in Fetter Lane, 
to distract his mind from melancholy and postpone his 
madness. That Hazlitt said that Mary Lamb was the 
wisest and most rational woman he had ever known. 
That Professor Wilson, soon after he was selected to fill 



268 LIBRARY NOTES. 

the moral philosophy chair at Edinburgh, and the poet 
Campbell, were seen one morning leaving a tavern in that 
city, both " haggard and red-eyed, hoarse and exhausted, 
having sat t6te-a-t^te for twenty-four hours discussing 
poetry and wine to the top of their bent." That Richard 
Baxter, the stern Calvinist, and author of one hundred 
and sixty-eight works upon theology, wrote at the end of 
his long life, " I now see more good and more evil in all 
men than heretofore I did. I see that good men are not 
so good as I once thought they were, and I find that few 
are so bad as either malicious enemies or censorious sep- 
arating professors do imagine." That Theodore de Beza, 
the apostle of John Calvin, put to press at the same time 
his coarse amorous poems (Juvenilia) and his intolerant 
apology for the trial and execution of Servetus. That 
the " mighty Dr. Hill, who was not a very delicate feeder, 
could not make a dinner out of the press till by a happy 
transformation into Hannah Glass he turned himself into 
a cook, and sold receipts for made dishes to all the savory 
readers in the kingdom — the press then acknowledging 
him second in favor only to John Bunyan ; his feasts kept 
pace in sale with Nelson's fasts, and when his own name 
was fairly written out of credit, he wrote himself into im- 
mortality under an alias." That Madame de Montespan, 
who found it for her interest and vanity to live in habitual 
violation of the seventh commandment, was so rigorous in 
her devotions as to weigh her bread in Lent. That Car- 
dinal Bernis, the most worthless of abbes, who owed his 
advancement in the church to Madame de Pompadour, the 
most worthless of women, refused to communicate in the 
dignity of the purple with a woman of so unsanctimonious 
a character. That Rousseau, whose preaching made it 
fashionable for women of rank to nurse their own chil- 
dren, sent his own, as soon as born, to the foundling hos- 
pital. That Coleridge and Goldsmith wrote The House 
that Jack Built and Goody Two Shoes : more than all it 



PARADOXES. 26o 

is curious, and wonderful, that these two simple trifles 
seem destined to outlive their more elaborate productions 
— The Ancient Mariner and The Vicar of Wakefield. 
Christabel and The Deserted Village may hardly be pre- 
served amongst the curiosities of literature, when the fa- 
mous nursery rhymes — joyously ringing upon the tongues 
of silver-voiced children — will be immortally fresh and 
new. 



CONTRASTS. 

The world will never be tired reading and talking of 
the peculiarities and struggles of some of its literary 
worthies, they seem so incredible. Poor Goldsmith, for 
example : every incident relating to him is interesting, 
even if colored by envy — as most of the contempora- 
neous gossip about him was. " I first met Goldsmith," 
says Cumberland, "at the British Coffee House. He 
dined with us as a visitor, introduced by Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds, and we held a consultation upon the naming of 
his comedy, which some of the company had read, and 
which he detailed to the rest after his manner with a 
great deal of good-humor. Somebody suggested She 

Stoops to Conquer, and that title was agreed upon 

'You and I,' said he, 'have very different motives for 
resorting to the stage. I write for money, and care little 
about fame.' .... The whole company pledged them- 
selves to the support of the poet, and faithfully kept their 
promise to him. In fact, he needed all that could be 
done for him, as Mr. Colman, then manager of Covent 
Garden Theatre, protested against the comedy, when as 
yet he had not struck upon a name for it. Johnson at 
length stood forth in all his terror, as champion for the 
piece, and backed by us, his clients and retainers, de- 
manded a fair trial. Colman again protested, but, with 
that salvo for his own reputation, liberally lent his stage 
to one of the most eccentric productions that ever found 
its way to it, and She Stoops to Conquer was put into 
rehearsal. We were not over-sanguine of success, but 



CONTRASTS. 2Jl 

perfectly determined to struggle hard for our author; we 
accordingly assembled our strength at the Shakespeare 
Tavern in a considerable body for an early dinner, where 
Samuel Johnson took the chair at the head of a long 
table, and was the life and soul of the corps: the poet 
took post silently by his side, with the Burkes, Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, Fitzherbert, Caleb Whitefoord, and a phalanx 
of North British predetermined applauders, under the 
banner of Major Mills, all good men and true. Our 
illustrious president was in inimitable glee, and poor 
Goldsmith that day took all his raillery as patiently and 
complacently as my friend Boswell would have done any 
day or every day of his life. In the meantime, we did 
not forget our duty, and though we had a better comedy 
going, in which Johnson was chief actor, we betook our- 
selves in good time to our separate and allotted posts, 
and waited the awful drawing up of the curtain. As our 
stations were preconcerted, so were our signals for plau- 
dits arranged and determined upon in a manner that 
gave every one his cue where to look for them and how to 
follow them up. We had amongst us a very worthy and 
sufficient member, long since lost to his friends and the 
world at large, Adam Drummond, of amiable memory, 
who was gifted by nature with the most sonorous, and, at 
the same time, the most contagious, laugh that ever 
echoed from the human lungs. The neighing of the 
horse of the son of Hystaspes was a whisper to it ; the 
whole thunder of the theatre could not drown it. This 
kind and ingenuous friend fairly forewarned us that he 
knew no more when to give his fire than the cannon did 
that was planted on a battery. He desired, therefore, to 
have a flapper at his elbow, and I had the honor to be 
deputed to that office. I planted him in an upper box, 
pretty nearly over the stage, in full view of the pit and 
galleries, and perfectly well situated to give the echo all 
its play through the hollows and recesses of the theatre. 



272 LIBRARY NOTES. 

The success of our manoeuvres was complete. All eyes 
were upon Johnson, who sat in a front row of a side 
box, and when he laughed everybody thought themselves 
warranted to roar. In the meantime, my friend followed 
signals with a rattle so irresistibly comic that, when he 
had repeated it several times, the attention of the specta- 
tors was so engrossed by his person and performances 
that the progress of the play seemed likely to become a 
secondary object, and I found it prudent to insinuate to 
him that he might halt his music without any prejudice 
to the author ; but, alas, it was now too late to rein him 
in ; he had laughed upon my signal where he found no 
joke, and now unluckily he fancied that he found a joke 
in almost everything that was said ; so that nothing in 
nature could be more malapropos than some of his bursts 
every now and then were. These were dangerous mo- 
ments, for the pit began to take umbrage ; but we carried 
our play through, and triumphed, not only over Colman's 
judgment, but our own." It is related that Goldsmith, 
during the performance of the comedy, walked all the 
time in St. James's Park, in great uneasiness ; and when 
he thought it must be over, he hastened to the theatre. 
His ears were assailed with hisses as he entered the 
green-room, when he eagerly inquired of Mr. Colman the 
cause. " Pshaw ! Pshaw ! " said Colman, " don't be afraid 
of squibs, when we have been sitting on a barrel of gun- 
powder these two hours." The fact was, that the comedy 
had been completely successful, and that it was the farce 
which had excited those sounds so terrific to Goldsmith. 

A scene very different from that occurred at another 
" first acting " — as remarkable if not as famous. It was 
on the occasion of the first presentation of Lamb's farce 
of Mr. H., thirty years later, at Drury Lane. That acute 
dramatic scholar and critic had written a tragedy, — John 
Woodvil, — the fate of which his friend Procter has pleas- 
antly narrated : " It had been in Mr. Kemble's hands for 



CONTRASTS. 273 

about a year, and Lamb naturally became urgent to hear 
his decision upon it. Upon applying for this he found 
that his play was — lost ! This was at once acknowl- 
edged, and a ' courteous request made for another copy, 
if I had one by me.' Luckily, another copy existed. The 
' first runnings ' of a genius were not, therefore, altogether 
lost, by having been cast, without a care, into the dusty 
limbo of the theatre. The other copy was at once sup- 
plied, and the play very speedily rejected. It was after- 
ward facetiously brought forward in one of the early 
numbers of the Edinburgh Review, and there noticed as 
a rude specimen of the earliest age of the drama, ' older 
than JEschylus.' " But the condemnation of his tragedy 
did not discourage him ; he now tried his genius upon a 
farce. Its acceptance, Talfourd says, gave Lamb some of 
the happiest moments he ever spent. He wrote joyously 
to Wordsworth about it, even carrying his humorous antic- 
ipations so far as to indulge in a draft of the " orders " 
he should send out to his friends after it had had a suc- 
cessful run : " Admit to Boxes. Mr. H. Ninth Night. 
Charles Lamb." Hear what he says about it to his friend 
Manning, then in China : " The title is Mr. H., no more • 
how simple, how taking ! A great H — sprawling over 
the play-bill, and attracting eyes at every corner. The 
story is a coxcomb appearing at Bath, vastly rich — all 
the ladies dying for him — all bursting to know who he is 

— but he goes by no other name than Mr. H. j a curiosity 
like that of the dames of Strasburg about the man with 
the great nose. But I won't tell you any more about it. 
Yes, I will • but I can't give you any idea how I have 
done it. I '11 just tell you that after much vehement ad- 
miration, when his true name comes out, — ' Hogsflesh,' 

— all the women shun him, avoid him, and not one can 
be found to change her name for him — that 's the idea : 
how flat it is here, but how whimsical in the farce ! And 
only think how hard upon me it is that the ship is dis- 

18 



274 LIBRARY NOTES. 

patched to-morrow, and my triumph cannot be ascertained 
till the Wednesday after ; but all China will ring of it by 

and by I shall get two hundred pounds from the 

theatre if Mr. H. has a good run, and I hope one hun- 
dred pounds for the copyright Mary and I are to 

sit next the orchestra in the pit, next the dweedle dees." 
The Wednesday came, the wished-for evening, which de- 
cided the fate of Mr. H. " Great curiosity," says Tal- 
fourd, "was excited by the announcement; the house 
was crowded to the ceiling, and the audience impatiently 
awaited the conclusion of the long intolerable opera by 
which it was preceded. At length the hero of the farce en- 
tered, gayly dressed, and in happiest spirits, — enough, not 
too much, elated, — and delivered the prologue with great 
vivacity and success. The farce began ; at first it was 
much applauded ; but the wit seemed wire-drawn ; and 
when the curtain fell on the first act, the friends of the 
author began to fear. The second act dragged heavily on, 
as second acts of farces will do ; a rout at Bath, peopled 
with ill-dressed and over-dressed actors and actresses, in- 
creased the disposition to yawn ; and when the moment 
of disclosure came, and nothing worse than the name 
Hogsflesh was heard, the audience resented the long play 
on their curiosity, and would hear no more. Lamb, with 
his sister, sat, as he anticipated, in the front of the pit ; 
and having joined in encoring the epilogue, the brilliancy 
of which injured the farce, he gave way with equal pliancy 
to the common feeling, and hissed and hooted as loudly 
as any of his neighbors ! " Away went the poet's fame, 
and the hoped-for three hundred pounds ! Not even the 
autocratic countenance of Johnson, and the big, conta- 
gious laugh of Drummond, could have saved them. The 
next morning's play-bill contained a veracious announce- 
ment, that " the new farce of Mr. H., performed for the 
first time last night, was received by an overflowing audi- 
ence with universal applause, and will be repeated for the 



CONTRASTS. 275 

second time to-morrow ; " but the stage lamps never that 
morrow saw ! An amusing, sad spectacle the whole thing 
was ; Lamb, especially, — the dramatic scholar, critic, and 
wit, the theatre-goer, the associate of playwrights and ac- 
tors, — hissing and hooting his own bantling ! In a letter 
afterward to Manning, he labors to be amusing over the 
catastrophe in this ghastly and extravagant manner : " So 
I go creeping on since I was lamed by that cursed fall 
from off the top of Drury Lane Theatre into the pit, 
something more than a year ago. However, I have been 
free of the house ever since, and the house was pretty 
free with me upon that occasion. Hang 'em, how they 
hissed ! It was not a hiss neither, but a sort of a frantic 
yell, like a congregation of mad geese ; with roaring some- 
times like bears ; mows and mops like apes ; sometimes 
snakes, that hissed me into madness. 'T was like St. 
Anthony's temptations. Mercy on us ! that God should 
give his favorite children, men, mouths to speak with, to 
discourse rationally, to promise smoothly, to flatter agree- 
ably, to encourage warmly, to counsel wisely, to sing with, 
to drink with, and to kiss with, and that they should turn 
them into mouths of adders, bears, wolves, hyenas, and 
whistle like tempests, and emit breath through them like 
distillations of aspic poison, to asperse and vilify the in- 
nocent labors of their fellow-creatures who are desirous 
to please them ! Heaven be pleased to make the teeth 
rot out of them all, therefore ! Make them a reproach, 
and all that pass by them to loll out their tongues at 
them ! Blind mouths ! as Milton somewhere calls them." 
Poor Elia ! Of crazy stock ; himself in a mad-house 
for six weeks at the end of his twentieth year ; his sister 
insane at intervals throughout her life ; his mother hope- 
lessly bed-ridden till killed by her daughter in a fit of 
frenzy ; his father pitifully imbecile ; his old maiden aunt 
home from a rich relation's to be nursed till she died — 
all dependent upon him, his more prosperous brother de- 



276 LIBRARY NOTES. 

dining to bear any part of the burden ; his work for more 
than thirty years monotonous, and most of it performed 
at the same desk in the same back office ; pinched all the 
time by adversity ; with no ear for music ; the list of his 
few friends, to use his own words, " in the world's eye, a 
ragged regiment," — including the poet Lloyd, who died 
insane, and the scholar Dyer, who was so absent-minded 
as at one time to empty the contents of his snuff-box into 
the tea-pot when he was preparing breakfast for a hungry 
friend, at another, with staff in hand, and at noonday, 
to walk straight into the river, — the humor, we say, of 
dear, wretched, gentle Charles Lamb must stand a won- 
der in English literature. 

Not less incredible was the steady growth of the pro- 
digious genius of Charlotte Bronte, under circumstances 
hardly less awfully depressing. Think of the woful life 
of that suffering prodigy, in that cheerless village of for- 
bidding stone houses, whose grim architecture illustrated 
the rigid hardness of their inhabitants. Above, below, 
all around, were rocks and moors, " where neither flowers 
nor vegetables would flourish, and where even a tree of 
moderate dimensions might be hunted far and wide ; 
where the snow lay long and late ; and where often, on 
autumnal and winter nights, the four winds of heaven 
seemed to meet and rage together, tearing round the 
houses as if they were wild beasts striving to find an en- 
trance." Stone dikes were used in place of hedges. The 
cold parsonage, at the top of the one desolate street, with 
its stone stairs and stone floors in the passages and par- 
lors, was surrounded on three sides by the " great old 
church-yard," which was " terribly full of upright tomb- 
stones," and which poisoned the water-springs of the 
pumps. The funeral bells, tolling, tolling, and the " chip, 
chip " of the mason, as he cut the grave-stones in a shed 
close by, were habitual sounds. The pews in the old 
church were of black oak, with high divisions, with the 



CONTRASTS. 277 

names of the owners painted in white letters on the 
doors. Her father, the clergyman, harsh, hard, and un- 
social ; at all times denying flesh food to his puny chil- 
dren ; at dinner permitting them only potatoes, and rarely 
or never taking his meals with them ; with a temper so 
violent and distrustful as to cause him always to carry a 
pistol, which he was in the habit of discharging from an 
upper window whenever in a fit of passion ; who burned 
the little colored shoes of his children, presented by their 
mother's cousin, lest they should foster a love of dress ; 
who cut in strips the silk gown of his wife because its 
color was not suited to his puritanical taste — at the 
time, too, when she was slowly dying of an internal can- 
cer. Sent from home to be educated at a miserable 
school provided for the daughters of clergymen, where 
were bad air and bad food, and which caused the speedy 
death of both her elder sisters. So short-sighted that 
" she always seemed to be seeking something, moving 
her head from side to side to catch a sight of it." Hav- 
ing no visitors ; visiting, during her childhood, but at one 
house, and that for but a short time. Her only intimate 
associates her two younger sisters. Wonderful trio ! 
" At nine o'clock they put away their work, and began to 
pace the room backward and forward, up and down, over 
the stone floors, — as often with the candles extinguished, 
for economy's sake, as not, — their figures glancing in 
the firelight, and out into the shadow, perpetually. At 
this time they talked over past cares and troubles ; they 
planned for the future, and consulted each other as to 
their plans. In after years, this was the time for discus- 
sing together the plots of their novels. And again, still 
later, this was the time for the last surviving sister (Char- 
lotte) to walk alone, from old accustomed habit, round 
and round the desolate room, thinking sadly upon the 
* days that were no more.' " Is there anything in books 
more sad and touching ? Her only pet was a fierce bull- 



278 LIBRARY NOTES. 

dog, and her only male associate her brilliant, drunken 
brother (who willfully died upon his feet, in an upright 
position, to fulfill an oft-declared purpose), a continual 
disgrace and terror as long as he lived. And much of 
the time, poor thing, in an agony about the fate of her 
soul ! How the little, pinched victim of all this misery 
and wretchedness could have written a narrative which at 
once took its place, in spite of faithless and unsympathiz- 
ing critics, and securely kept it, too, amongst the highest 
and best productions of the age, is a startling marvel in 
literature. Out of her own life she wrought her wonder- 
ful works. " The fiery imagination that at times eats me 
up," she wrote to her friend. In her stories she but told 
her own agonies, as Cowper noted the progress of his in- 
sanity, and the French physiologist his ebbing pulse under 
the deadly influence of burning charcoal. 

But, recurring to Lamb and his set, what impossible, 
incomprehensible characters it included : Elton Ham- 
mond, for instance, a contemporary if not an associate. 
He inherited his father's tea business in Milk Street. 
In order, he said, to set an example to the world how a 
business should be carried on, and that he might not be 
interfered with in his plans, he turned off the clerks and 
every servant in the establishment, which soon wound up 
the business altogether. For a while he had no other 
society than a little child, which he taught its letters, and 
a mouse, that fed out of his hands. He journalized his 
food, his sleep, his dreams. He had a conviction that 
he was to have been, and ought to have been, the great- 
est of men, but was conscious in fact that he was not. 
The reason assigned by him for putting an end to his life 
was that he could not condescend to live without fulfill- 
ing his proper vocation. He said to one of his friends 
that he was on the point of making a discovery which 
would put an end to physical and moral evil in the world. 
He quarreled with another of his friends for not being 



CONTRASTS. 279 

willing to join him in carrying a heavy box through the 
streets of London for a poor woman. He refused a pri- 
vate secretaryship to Rough, a colonial chief justice, on 
the ground of the obligation involved to tell a lie and 
write a lie every day, subscribing himself the humble ser- 
vant of people he did not serve, and toward whom he felt 
no humility. Here are a few things he wrote : " When I 
was about eight or ten I promised marriage to a wrinkled 
cook we had, aged about sixty-five. I was convinced of 
the insignificance of beauty, but really felt some consider- 
able ease at hearing of her death, about four years after, 
when I began to repent of my vow." . ..." I always said 
that I would do anything to make another happy, and told 
a boy I would give him a shilling if it would make him 
happy ; he said it would, so I gave it to him. It is not 
to be wondered at that I had plenty of such applications, 
and soon emptied my purse. It is true I rather grudged 
the money, because the boys laughed rather more than I 
wished them. But it would have been inconsistent to 
have appeared dissatisfied. Some of them were generous 
enough to return the money, and I was prudent enough 
to take it, though I declared that if it would make them 
happy I should be sorry to have it back." . . . . " It is 
not pain, it is not death, that I dread, it is the hatred of 
a man ; there is something in it so shocking that I would 
rather submit to any injury than incur or increase the 
hatred of a man by revenging it." . . . . " The chief 
philosophical value of my papers I conceive to be that 
they record something of a mind that was very near taking 
a station far above all that have hitherto appeared in the 
world." . . . . " It is provoking that the secret of render- 
ing man perfect in wisdom, power, virtue, and happiness, 
should die with me. I never till this moment doubted 
that some other person would discover it; but I now 
recollect that when I have relied on others I have always 
been disappointed. Perhaps none may ever discover it, 



280 LIBRARY NOTES. 

and the human race has lost its only chance of eternal 
happiness." . ..." I believe that man requires religion. 
I believe that there is no true religion now existing. I 
believe that there will be one. It will not, after eighteen 
hundred years of existence, be of questionable truth and 
utility, but perhaps in eighteen years be entirely spread 
over the earth, an effectual remedy for all human suffer- 
ing, and a source of perpetual joy. It will not need im- 
mense learning to be understood, it will be subject to no 
controversy." . . . . " Another sufficient reason for sui- 
cide is, that I was this morning out of temper with Mrs. 
Douglas (for no fault of hers). I did not betray myself in 
the least, but I reflected to be exposed to the possibility 
of such an event once a year was evil enough to render 
life intolerable. The disgrace of using an impatient word 
is to me overpowering." . ..." I am stupefied with writ- 
ing, and yet I cannot go my long journey without taking 
leave of one from whom I have received so much kind- 
ness, and from whose society so much delight. My place 
is booked in Charon's boat to-night at twelve. Diana 
kindly consents to be of the party. This is handsome of 
her. She was not looked for on my part. Perhaps she is 
willing to acknowledge my obedience to her laws by a gen- 
teel compliment. Good. The gods, then, are grateful." 
To the coroner and his jury he wrote, " Let me suggest 
the following verdict, as combining literal truth with jus- 
tice : ' Died by his own hand, but not feloniously.' If I 
have offended God, it is for God, not you, to inquire. 
Especial public duties I have none. If I have deserted 
any engagement in society, let the parties aggrieved con- 
sign my name to obloquy. I have for nearly seven years 
been disentangling myself from all my engagements, that 
I might at last be free to retire from life. I am free to- 
day, and avail myself of my liberty. I cannot be a good 
man, and prefer death to being a bad one, — as bad as I 
have been and as others are." 



CONTRASTS. 28 1 

And there was Blake — " artist, genius, mystic, or mad- 
man ? " " Probably all," thought Robinson, one of his 
warmest admirers ; for he had admirers, and some of 
them were eminent. Coleridge knew him, and talked 
finely about him. Wordsworth thought he had " in him 
the elements of poetry much more than either Byron or 
Scott." Lamb liked his poems. Hazlitt said of them, 
" They are beautiful, and only too deep for the vulgar." 
His genius as an artist was praised by Flaxman and Fu- 
seli. His countenance is described as " Socratic," with 
" an expression of great sweetness ; " " when animated 
he had about him an air of inspiration." Though in great 
poverty, he was ever a gentleman ; with genuine dignity 
and independence, he scorned all presents. He wrote 
songs, composed music, and painted, at the same time he 
pursued his business as an engraver. Among his friends 
he gave out that his pictures were copied from great 
works revealed to him, and that his lessons in art were 
given him by celestial tongues. When he spoke of his 
" visions," it was in the ordinary unemphatic tones in 
which we speak of every-day matters. He conversed fa- 
miliarly with the spirits of Homer, Moses, Pindar, Dante, 
Shakespeare, Voltaire, Sir William Wallace, Milton, and 
other illustrious dead, giving repeatedly their very words 
in their conversations. Sometimes, too, he wrangled with 
demons. His books (and his MSS. are immense in quan- 
tity) are dictations from the spirits. He possessed, it was 
said, the highest and most exalted powers of the mind, but 
not the lower. " He could fly, but he could not walk ; he 
had genius and inspiration, without the prosaic balance- 
wheel of common sense." In poetry, it was observed, 
he most enjoyed the parts which to others are most ob- 
scure. His wife Katherine, good soul, believed in him, 
and was invaluable to him. She was ever sitting by his 
side, or assisting him at the press. " You know, dear," 
she said, believingly, "the first time you saw God was 



282 LIBRARY NOTES. 

when you were four years old, and he put his head to 
the window, and set you a-screaming." Both believed 
that his pictures were veritable visions transferred to the 
canvas or the plate. Sixteen of his mystical designs are 
illustrations of " The Gates of Paradise," one hundred 
of " Jerusalem," and twenty-seven " singular, but power, 
ful drawings " disclose the mysteries of hell. He wrote 
to Flaxman, addressing him as " Dear Sculptor of Eter- 
nity," and saying, in his strange, wild way, " In my 
brain are studies and chambers filled with books and 
pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of 
eternity, before my mortal life ; and these works are the 
delight and study of archangels." A friend said to him, 
" You express yourself as Socrates used to do. What re- 
semblance do you suppose there is between your spirit 
and his?" "The same as between our countenances," 
he answered. After a pause he added, " I was Socrates ;" 
and then, as if correcting himself, said, " a sort of brother. 
I must have had conversations with him. So I had with 
Jesus Christ. I have an obscure recollection of having 
been with both of them." Once he said, " There is no 
use in education. I hold it to be wrong. It is the great 
sin. It is eating of the tree of the knowledge of good 
and evil. This was the fault of Plato. He knew of noth- 
ing but the virtues and vices, and good and evil. There 
is nothing in all that. Everything is good in God's eyes." 
Being asked about the moral character of Dante, in writ- 
ing his " Vision," — was he pure ? " Pure," said Blake, 
" do you think there is any purity in God's eyes ? The 
angels in heaven are no more so than we. ' He chargeth 
his angels with folly.'" He afterward represented the 
Supreme Being as liable to error. " Did he not repent 
him that he had made Nineveh ? " Though he spoke of 
his happiness, he also alluded to past sufferings, and to 
suffering as necessary. " There is suffering in heaven, 
for where there is the capacity of enjoyment, there is also 



CONTRASTS. 283 

the capacity of pain." Comparing moral with natural 
evil, he said, " Who shall say that God thinks evil ? That 
is a wise tale of the Mahometans, of the angel of the 
Lord that murdered the infant" (alluding to the Hermit 
of Parnell). "Is not every infant that dies of disease 
murdered by an angel ? " "I saw Milton," he said on 
one occasion, " and he told me to beware of being mis- 
led by his Paradise Lost. In particular he wished me to 
show the falsehood of the doctrine, that carnal pleasures 
arose from the Fall. The Fall could not produce any 
pleasure." He spoke of Milton as being at one time a 
sort of classical atheist, and of Dante as being now with 
God. His faculty of vision, he said, he had had from 
early infancy. He thought all men partook of it, but it 
is lost for want of being cultivated. " I assert for my- 
self," said he, "that I do not behold the outward creation, 
and that to me it is hinderance and not action. ' What ! ' 
it will be questioned, ' when the sun rises, do you not see 
a disc of fire somewhat like a guinea ? ' Oh no, no, no ! 
I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host, cry- 
ing, ' Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.' I ques- 
tion not my corporeal eye any more than I would question 
a window concerning a sight. I look through it, and not 
with it." . ..." I have written more than Voltaire or 
Rousseau. Six or seven epic poems as long as Homer, 
and twenty tragedies as long as Macbeth." . ..." I 
write when commanded by the spirits, and the moment I 
have written I see the words fly about the room in all di- 
rections. It is then published, and the spirits can read. 
My MS. is of no further use. I have been tempted to 
burn my MSS., but my wife won't let me." . . . . " Men 
are born with a devil and an angel." .... "I have 
never known a very bad man, who had not something 
very good about him." . ..." I should be sorry if I had 
any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has 
is so much taken from his spiritual glory. I wish to do 



284 LIBRARY NOTES. 

nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing 
whatever. I am quite happy." For the greater part of 
his life, he " lived in a garret, on crusts of bread." Death 
he considered as nothing but " going from one room to 
another." He died with his pencil in his hand, making a 
likeness of his wife, and chanting pleasant songs. Died, 
she said, " like an angel." 

And George Dyer — a pet acquaintance of Lamb's — 
what a character was he ! A bundle of contradictions if 
ever there was one. Poor and always struggling, but 
never envious, and utterly without hatred of the rich. A 
poet whose poetry was to himself " as good as anybody's, 
and anybody's as good as his own." A bachelor, his life 
was solitary, but he never thought of his solitude, till 
it was suggested to him by an observing, sympathizing 
widow, who kindly and generously consented to share it 
with him — her fourth husband ! He is characterized by 
one of his literary friends as " one of the best creatures 
morally that ever breathed." He was a ripe scholar, but 
to the end of his days (and he lived to be eighty-five) he 
was a bookseller's drudge. He made indexes, corrected 
the press, and occasionally gave lessons in Greek and 
Latin. Simple and kind, he repeatedly gave away his 
last guinea. He was the author of the Life and Writings 
of Robert Robinson, which was pronounced by Words- 
worth and Samuel Parr one of the best biographies in 
the language. The charm of the book is that Robinson's 
peculiar humor was wholly unappreciated by the sim- 
ple-minded biographer. Robinson was a fine humorist ; 
Dyer had absolutely no sense of humor. It was when he 
was on his way from Lamb's to Mrs. Barbauld's, that, 
in his absent-mindedness, he walked straight into New 
River, and was with difficulty saved from drowning. 
(Young, one of Fielding's intimate friends, who sat for 
the portrait of Parson Adams, was another such charac- 
ter. He also " supported an uncomfortable existence by 



CONTRASTS. 285 

translating for the booksellers from the Greek," over- 
flowed with benevolence and learning, and was noted for 
his absence of mind. He had been chaplain of a regi- 
ment during Marlborough's wars ; and " meditating one 
evening upon the glories of nature, and the goodness of 
Providence, he walked straight into the camp of the 
enemy ; nor was he aroused from his reverie till the hos- 
tile sentinel shouted, ' Who goes there ? ' The command- 
ing officer, finding that he had come among them in sim- 
plicity and not in guile, allowed him to return, and lose 
himself, if he pleased, in meditations on his danger and 
deliverance.") It is said that certain roguish young 
ladies, Dyer's cousins, lacking due reverence for learning 
and poetry, were wont to heap all sorts of meats upon 
the worthy gentleman's plate at dinner, he being lost in 
conversation until near the close of the repast, when he 
would suddenly recollect himself and fall to till he had 
finished the whole. Talfourd, speaking of Lamb and 
Dyer, says, " No contrast could be more vivid than that 
presented by the relations of each to the literature they 
both loved, — one divining its inmost essences, plucking 
out the heart of its mysteries, shedding light on its dim- 
mest recesses ; the other devoted with equal assiduity to 
its externals. Books, to Dyer, ' were a real world, both 
pure and good ; ' among them he passed, unconscious of 
time, from youth to extreme old age, vegetating on their 
dates and forms, and ' trivial fond records,' in the learned 
air of great libraries, or the dusty confusion of his own, 
with the least possible apprehension of any human inter- 
est vital in their pages, or of any spirit of wit or fancy 
glancing across them. His life was an academic pasto- 
ral. Methinks I see his gaunt, awkward form, set off by 
trousers too short, like those outgrown by a gawky lad, 
and a rusty coat as much too large for the wearer, hang- 
ing about him like those garments which the aristocratic 
Milesian peasantry prefer to the most comfortable rustic 



286 LIBRARY NOTES. 

dress ; his long head silvered over with short yet strag- 
gling hair, and his dark gray eyes glistening with faith 
and wonder, as Lamb satisfies the curiosity which has 
gently disturbed his studies as to the authorship of the 
Waverley Novels, by telling him, in the strictest confi- 
dence, that they are the works of Lord Castlereagh, just 
returned from the Congress of Sovereigns at Vienna. 
Off he runs, with animated stride and shambling enthu- 
siasm, nor stops till he reaches Maida Hill, and breathes 
his news into the startled ear of Leigh Hunt, who, ' as a 
public writer,' ought to be possessed of the great fact 
with which George is laden ! Or shall I endeavor to re- 
vive the bewildered look with which just after he had 
been announced as one of Lord Stanhope's executors 
and residuary legatees, he received Lamb's grave inquiry 
whether it was true, as commonly reported, that he was 
to be made a lord ? ' Oh dear, no, Mr. Lamb,' responded 
he with earnest seriousness, but not without a moment's 
quivering vanity. ' I could not think of such a thing ; it 
is not true, I assure you.' ' I thought not,' said Lamb, 
' and I contradict it wherever I go. But the government 
will not ask your consent; they may raise you to the 
peerage without your ever knowing it.' ' I hope not, Mr. 
Lamb ; indeed — indeed, I hope not. It would not suit 
me at all,' responded Dyer, and went his way musing on 
the possibility of a strange honor descending on his re- 
luctant brow. Or shall I recall the visible presentment 
of his bland unconsciousness of evil when his sportive 
friend taxed it to the utmost by suddenly asking what he 
thought of the murderer Williams, who, after destroying 
two families in RatclifTe Highway, had broken prison by 
suicide, and whose body had just before been conveyed 
in shocking procession to its cross-road grave ? The des- 
perate attempt to compel the gentle optimist to speak ill 
of a mortal creature produced no happier success than 
the answer, ' Why, I should think, Mr. Lamb, he must 



CONTRASTS. 287 

have been rather an eccentric character.' " Honest, sim- 
ple soul ! My Uncle Toby over again, for all the world. 
What a contrast with all these ailing souls was the mag- 
nificent Christopher North ! You remember the scene of 
his triumph on the occasion of his first lecture to the 
moral philosophy class in the University of Edinburgh. 
It deserves to be thought of along with the " trial 
scenes " we have been reviewing. The contest for the 
professorship had been bitterly fought over a period of 
four months, with Sir William Hamilton for competitor, 
— Sir James Mackintosh and Mr. Malthus being only 
possible candidates. Austerity and prejudice — essential 
and saintly elements in all good Scotsmen — instinctively 
combined against him, and inveterately pursued him. 
" When it was found useless to gainsay his mental quali- 
fications for the office, or to excite odium on the ground 
of his literary offenses, the attack was directed against 
his moral character, and it was broadly insinuated that 
this candidate for the chair of ethics was himself a man 
of more than doubtful morality ; that he was, in fact, not 
merely a 'reveler,' and a 'blasphemer,' but a bad hus- 
band, a bad father, a person not fit to be trusted as a 
teacher of youth." A " bad husband " to the good 
woman he thus memorably characterized in a letter to 
one of his friends : " I was this morning married to Jane 
Penney, and doubt not of receiving your blessing, which, 
from your brotherly heart, will delight me, and doubtless 
not be unheard by the Almighty. She is gentleness, in- 
nocence, sense, and feeling, surpassed by no woman, and 
has remained pure, as from her Maker's hands ; " the 
mother of all those children he loved so, — the death of 
whom, in his ripe manhood and in the bloom of his fame, 
nearly broke his heart ! Sir Walter and other powerful 
friends repelled the slanders. Wilson triumphed. Still 
he was pursued ; his enemies determined he should be 
put down, humiliated, even in his own class-room. An 



288 LIBRARY NOTES. 

eye-witness thus describes the scene on the occasion of 
the delivery of the professor's first lecture : " There was 
a furious bitterness of feeling against him among the 
classes of which probably most of his pupils would con- 
sist, and although I had no prospect of being among 
them, I went to his first lecture, prepared to join in a 
cabal, which I understood was formed to put him down. 
The lecture-room was crowded to the ceiling. Such a 
collection of hard-browed, scowling Scotsmen, muttering 
over their knobsticks, I never saw. The professor en- 
tered with a bold step, amid profound silence. Every 
one expected some deprecatory or propitiatory introduc- 
tion of himself and his subject, upon which the mass was 
to decide against him, reason or no reason ; but he began 
in a voice of thunder right into the matter of his lecture, 
kept up unflinchingly and unhesitatingly, without a pause, 
a flow of rhetoric such as Dugald Stewart or Thomas 
Brown, his predecessors, never delivered in the same 
place. Not a word, not a murmur escaped his captivated, 
I ought to say his conquered audience, and at the end 
they gave him a downright unanimous burst of applause. 
Those who came to scoff remained to praise." The 
ruling classes in educational matters could not conceive 
of the fitness of a man like Wilson for the moral philos- 
ophy chair in a university. The giant he was physically, 
with appetites and passions to match, he was a reproach 
to the feeble, a terror to the timid, and a horror to the 
"unco guid, or the rigidly righteous." The truth of him 
was such an exaggeration of the average man that the 
scholars and pedagogues and parsons could only look 
upon him as a monster, with a character as monstrous as 
his nature. He is described as " long-maned and mighty, 
whose eyes were 'as the lightnings of fiery flame,' and 
his voice like an organ bass ; who laid about him, when 
the fit was on, like a Titan, breaking small men's bones ; 
who was loose and careless in his apparel, even as in all 



CONTRASTS. 289 

things he seemed too strong and primitive to heed much 
the niceties of custom." In his youth, he " ran three 
miles for a wager against a chaise," and came out ahead. 
Somewhat later he "gained a bet by walking, toe and 
heel, six miles in two minutes within the hour." When 
he was twenty-one, height five feet eleven inches, weight 
eleven stone, he leaped, with a run, twenty-three feet " on 
a slightly inclined plane, perhaps an inch to a yard," and 
"was admitted to be (Ireland excepted) the best far 
leaper of his day in England." He could jump twelve 
yards in three jumps, with a great stone in each hand. 
" With him the angler's silent trade was a ruling passion. 
He did not exaggerate to the Shepherd in the Noctes, 
when he said that he had taken ' a hundred and thirty in 
one day out of Loch Aire,' as we see by his letters that 
even larger numbers were taken by him." Of his pugil- 
istic skill, it is said by De Quincey that " there was no 
man who had any talents, real or fancied, for thumping 
or being thumped, but he had experienced some preeing 
of his merits from Mr. Wilson." " Meeting one day with 
a rough and unruly wayfarer, who showed inclination to 
pick a quarrel concerning right of passage across a cer- 
tain bridge, the fellow obstructed the way, and making 
himself decidedly obnoxious, Wilson lost all patience, 
and offered to fight him. The man made no objection 
to the proposal, but replied that he had better not fight 
with him, as he was so and so, mentioning the name of 
a (then not unknown) pugilist. This statement had, as 
may be supposed, no effect in dampening the belligerent 
intentions of the Oxonian ; he knew his own strength, 
and his skill too. In one moment off went his coat, and 
he set to upon his antagonist in splendid style. The 
astonished and punished rival, on recovering from his 
blows and surprise, accosted him thus : ' You can only 
be one of the two : you are either Jack Wilson or the 
devil.' " His pedestrian feats were marvelous. " On 
19 



29O LIBRARY NOTES. 

one occasion," writes an old classmate of Wilson's at Ox- 
ford, " having been absent a day or two, we asked him, 
on his return to the common room, where he had been. 
He said, In London. When did you return ? This morn- 
ing. How did you come ? On foot. As we all ex- 
pressed surprise, he said, ' Why, the fact is, I dined 
yesterday with a friend in Grosvenor (I think it was) 
Square, and as I quitted the house, a fellow who was 
passing was impertinent and insulted me, upon which I 
knocked him down ; and as I did not choose to have 
myself called in question for a street row, I at once 
started, as I was, in my dinner dress, and never stopped 
until I got to the college gate this morning, as it was 
being opened.' Now this was a walk of fifty-eight miles 
at least, which he must have got over in eight or nine 
hours at most, supposing him to have left the dinner- 
party at nine in the evening." Some years later, he 
walked — his wife accompanying him — "three hundred 
and fifty miles in the Highlands, between the 5th of July 
and the 26th of August, sojourning in divers glens from 
Sabbath unto Sabbath, fishing, eating, and staring." 
Mrs. Wilson returned from this wonderful tour " bonnier 
than ever," and Wilson himself, to use his own phrase, 
" strong as an eagle." One of their resting-places was at 
the school-master's house in Glenorchy. While there 
" his time was much occupied by fishing, and distance 
was not considered an obstacle. He started one morn- 
ing at an early hour to fish in a loch which at that time 
abounded in trout, in the Braes of Glenorchy, called 
Loch Toila. Its nearest point was thirteen miles distant 
from his lodgings at the school-house. On reaching it, 
and unscrewing the butt-end of his fishing-rod to get the 
top, he found he had it not. Nothing daunted, he walked 
back, breakfasted, got his fishing-rod, made all complete, 
and off again to Loch Toila. He could not resist fishing 
on the river when a pool looked inviting, but he went 



CONTRASTS. 291 

always onward, reaching the loch a second time, fished 
round it, and found that the long summer day had come 
to an end. He set off for his home again with his fish- 
ing-basket full, and confessing somewhat to weariness. 
Passing near a farm-house whose inmates he knew (for 
he had formed acquaintance with all), he went to get 
some food. They were in bed, for it was eleven o'clock 
at night, and after rousing them, the hostess hastened to 
supply him ; but he requested her to get him some 
whisky and milk. She came with a bottle full, and a 
can of milk, with a tumbler. Instead of a tumbler, he 
requested a bowl, and poured the half of the whisky in, 
along with half the milk. He drank the mixture at a 
draught, and while his kind hostess was looking on with 
amazement, he poured the remainder of the whisky and 
milk into the bowl, and drank that also. He then pro- 
ceeded homeward, performing a journey of not less than 
seventy miles." Prodigious ! It beat the achievement of 
Phidippides, who, according to tradition, ran from Athens 
to Sparta, one hundred and twenty miles, in two days. 
But here is a street scene, related to his daughter by a 
lady who saw it, which illustrates the tremendous pro- 
fessor of moral philosophy still further. " One summer 
afternoon, as she was about to sit down to dinner, her 
servant requested her to look out of the window, to see a 
man cruelly beating his horse. The sight not being a 
very gratifying one, she declined, and proceeded to take 
her seat at table. It was quite evident that the servant 
had discovered something more than the ill-usage of the 
horse to divert his attention, for he kept his eyes fixed on 
the window, again suggesting to his mistress that she 
ought to look out. Her interest was at length excited, 
and she rose to see what was going on. In front of her 
house (Moray Place) stood a cart of coals, which the 
poor victim of the carter was unable to drag along. He 
had been beating the beast most unmercifully, when at 



292 LIBRARY NOTES. 

that moment Professor Wilson, walking past, had seen 
the outrage and immediately interfered. The lady said 
that from the expression of his face, and vehemence of 
his manner, the man was evidently ' getting it,' though 
she was unable to hear what was said. The carter, exas- 
perated at this interference, took up his whip in a threat- 
ening way, as if with the intent to strike the professor. 
In an instant that well-nerved hand twisted it from the 
coarse fist of the man as if it had been a straw, and walk- 
ing quietly up to the cart he unfastened its trams, and 
hurled the whole weight of coals into the street. The 
rapidity with which this was done left the driver of the 
cart speechless. Meanwhile, poor Rosinante, freed from 
his burden, crept slowly away, and the professor, still 
clutching the whip in one hand, and leading the horse in 
the other, proceeded through Moray Place to deposit the 
wretched animal in better keeping than that of his 
driver." Another of his " interferences " occurred during 
vacation time, in the south of Scotland, when the pro- 
fessor had exchanged the gown for the old " sporting 
jacket." "On his return to Edinburgh, he was obliged 
to pass through Hawick, where, on his arrival, finding it 
to be fair-day, he readily availed himself of the opportu- 
nity to witness the amusements going on. These hap- 
pened to include a ' little mill ' between two members of 
the local 'fancy.' His interest in pugilism attracted him 
to the spot, where he soon discovered something very 
wrong, and a degree of injustice being perpetrated which 
he could not stand. It was the work of a moment to 
espouse the weaker side, a proceeding which naturally 
drew down upon him the hostility of the opposite party. 
This result was to him, however, of little consequence. 
There was nothing for it but to beat or be beaten. He 
was soon ' in position ; ' and, before his unknown adver- 
sary well knew what was coming, the skilled fist of the 
professor had planted such a ' facer ' as did not require 



CONTRASTS. 293 

repetition. Another c round ' was not called for ; and 
leaving the discomfited champion to recover at his lei- 
sure, the professor walked coolly away to take his seat in 
the stage-coach, about to start for Edinburgh." Is it 
any wonder that such a gigantic specimen of human 
nature was thought by the steady-going and saintly Edin- 
burghers, who tried men by mathematics and the cate- 
chism, to be preposterously unfit for the chair of ethics 
in their hallowed university ? They did not know then 
that the monster they hunted was capable of producing a 
description of a fairy's funeral — one of the most exqui- 
site bits of prose composition in literature, which is said 
to have so impressed Lord Jeffrey's mind that he never 
was tired of repeating it. Read it, and say you if any- 
body but Christopher North could have written it : 
" There it was, on a little river island, that once, whether 
sleeping or waking we know not, we saw celebrated a 
fairy's funeral. First we heard small pipes playing, as if 
no bigger than hollow rushes that whisper to the night 
winds ; and more piteous than aught that trills from 
earthly instrument was the scarce audible dirge ! It 
seemed to float over the stream, every foam-bell emitting 
a plaintive note, till the fairy anthem came floating over 
our couch, and then alighting without footsteps among 
the heather. The pattering of little feet was then heard, 
as if living creatures were arranging themselves in order, 
and then there was nothing but a more ordered hymn. 
The harmony was like the melting of musical dew-drops, 
and sang, without words, of sorrow and death. We 
opened our eyes, or rather sight came to them when 
closed, and dream was vision. Hundreds of creatures, 
no taller than the crest of the lapwing, and all hanging 
down their veiled heads, stood in a circle on a green plat 
among the rocks ; and in the midst was a bier, framed as 
it seemed of flowers unknown to the Highland hills ; and 
on the bier a fairy lying with uncovered face, pale as a 



294 LIBRARY NOTES. 

lily, and motionless as the snow. The dirge grew fainter 
and fainter, and then died quite away ; when two of the 
creatures came from the circle, and took their station, 
one at the head, the other at the foot of the bier. They 
sang alternate measures, not louder than the twitter of 
the awakened woodlark before it goes up the dewy air, 
but dolorous and full of the desolation of death. The 
flower-bier stirred ; for the spot on which it lay sank 
slowly down, and in a few moments the greensward was 
smooth as ever, the very dews glittering above the buried 
fairy. A cloud passed over the moon ; and, with a choral 
lament, the funeral troop sailed duskily away, heard afar 
off, so still was the midnight solitude of the glen. Then 
the disenthralled Orchy began to rejoice as before, 
through all her streams and falls ; and at the sudden 
leaping of the waters and outbursting of the moon, we 
awoke." 



XI. 

TYPES. 

" It never rains but it pours," is the pat proverb of all 
the world to express its belief in the inevitableness and 
omnipotence of extremes. Carlyle has enlarged upon it 
significantly, in that famous passage in which he likens 
men collectively to sheep. Like sheep, he says, are we 
seen ever running in torrents and mobs, if we ever run at 
all. " Neither know we, except by blind habit, where the 
good pastures lie : solely when the sweet grass is between 
our teeth, we know it, and chew it ; also when the grass 
is bitter and scant, we know it, — and bleat and butt : 
these last two facts we know of a truth, and in very deed. 
Thus do men and sheep play their parts on this nether 
earth ; wandering restlessly in large masses, they know 
not whither ; for most part, each following his neighbor, 
and his own nose. Nevertheless, not always ; look bet- 
ter, you shall find certain that do, in some small degree, 
know whither. Sheep have their bell-wether, some ram 
of the folds, endued with more valor, with clearer vision 
than other sheep ; he leads them through the wolds, by 
height and hollow, to the woods and water-courses, for 
covert or for pleasant provender ; courageously marching, 
and if need be leaping, and with hoof and horn doing 
battle, in the van : him they courageously, and with as- 
sured heart, follow. Touching it is, as every herdsman 
will inform you, with what chivalrous devotedness these 
woolly hosts adhere to their wether ; and rush after him, 
through good report and through bad report, were it into 
safe shelters and green thymy nooks, or into asphaltic 



296 LIBRARY NOTES. 

lakes and the jaws of devouring lions. Even also must 
we recall that fact which we owe Jean Paul's quick eye : 
1 If you hold a stick before the wether, so that he, by 
necessity, leaps in passing you, and then withdraw your 
stick, the flock will nevertheless all leap as he did \ and 
the thousandth sheep shall be found impetuously vault- 
ing over air, as the first did over an otherwise impassable 
barrier.' " 

Society is always swaying backward and forward — 
vibrating, like the pendulum, from one extreme to an- 
other ; for a moment only, now and then, is it upright, 
and governed by reason. Moderation is hateful to it. 
There is a pretty passage in one of Lucian's dialogues, 
where Jupiter complains to Cupid that, though he has 
had so many intrigues, he was never sincerely beloved. 
In order to be loved, says Cupid, you must lay aside your 
aegis and your thunderbolts, and you must curl and per- 
fume your hair, and place a garland on your head, and 
walk with a soft step, and assume a winning, obsequious 
deportment. But, replied Jupiter, I am not willing to re- 
sign so much of my dignity. Then, replied Cupid, leave 
off desiring to be loved. He wanted to be Jupiter and 
Adonis at the same time. " It is natural," says Bracken- 
ridge, in Modern Chivalry, "to distrust him who proposes 
to stop short of what seems a complete reform. We are 
right, say the people. You are right, says the man of pru- 
dence. We were wrong, say the people. You were wrong, 
says the same man." The majority rules. In the grove 
of Gotama lived a Brahman, who, having bought a sheep 
in another village, and carrying it home on his shoulder 
to sacrifice, was seen by three rogues, who resolved to 
take the animal from him by the following stratagem : 
Having separated, they agreed to encounter the Brahman 
on his road as if coming from different parts. One of 
them cried out, " O Brahman ! why dost thou carry that 
dog on thy shoulder ? " " It is not a dog," replied the 



TYPES. 297 

Brahman ; " it is a sheep for sacrifice." As he went 
on, the second knave met him, and put the same ques- 
tion ; whereupon the Brahman, throwing the sheep on 
the ground, looked at it again and again. Having re- 
placed it on his shoulder, the good man went with mind 
wavering like a string. But when the third rogue met 
him and said, "Father, where art thou taking that dog?" 
the Brahman, believing his eyes bewitched, threw down 
the sheep and hurried home, leaving the thieves to feast 
on that which he had provided for the gods. 

The world grows tired of admiring, and delights to 
limit its admiration. " Garrick," said Hazlitt, " kept up 
the fever of public admiration as long as anybody, but 
when he returned to the stage after a short absence no 
one went to see him." "The old Earl of Norwich, who," 
said Sir William Temple, " was esteemed the greatest wit 
in Charles the First's reign, when Charles the Second 
came to the throne was thought nothing of." Happy if 
the world's favorite to-day be not its victim to-morrow. 
Traveling through Switzerland, Napoleon was greeted with 
such enthusiasm that Bourrienne said to him, " It must 
be delightful to be greeted with such demonstrations of 
enthusiastic admiration." " Bah ! " replied Napoleon, 
" this same unthinking crowd, under a slight change of 
circumstances, would follow me just as eagerly to the 
scaffold." " I have," said an eminent American general 
to Baron de Hiibner, "the greatest horror of popular dem- 
onstrations. These very men who deafen you with their 
cheers to-day are capable of throwing stones and mud at 
you to-morrow." Mirabeau, on a famous occasion, amid 
the threatening clamors of an angry crowd, said, " A few 
days ago I too was to be carried in triumph, and now they 
are bawling through the streets, ' the great treason of the 
Count of Mirabeau.' This lesson was not necessary to 
remind me that the distance is short between the Capitol 
and the Tarpeian Rock." " What throngs ! what accla- 



298 LIBRARY NOTES. 

mations," exclaimed the flatterers of Cromwell, when he 
was proclaimed Protector of the Commonwealth of Eng- 
land. Cromwell replied, " There would be still more, if 
they were going to hang me." The multitudes that went 
before and that followed Christ into Jerusalem, crying, 
" Hosanna to the Son of David : Blessed is he that cometh 
in the name of the Lord : Hosanna in the highest," "cried 
out again, Crucify him. Then Pilate said unto them, 
Why, what evil hath he done ? and they cried out the 
more exceedingly, Crucify him." Madame Roland wrote 
from her prison-cell to Robespierre, " It is not, Robes- 
pierre, to excite your compassion, that I present you with 
a picture less melancholy than the truth. I am above 
asking your pity ; and were it offered, I should perhaps 
deem it an insult. I write for your instruction. Fortune 
is fickle ; and popular power is liable to change." " So- 
ciety," said Macaulay, writing of Byron, "capricious in 
its indignation, as it had been capricious in its fondness, 
flew into a rage with its froward and petted darling. He 
had been worshiped with an irrational idolatry. He was 
persecuted with an irrational fury." Junius, in the cele- 
brated letter, warns the king that " while he plumes him- 
self upon the security of his title to the crown, he should 
remember that, as it was acquired by one revolution, it 
may be lost by another." The Jews, said Luther, have a 
story of a king of Bashan, whom they call Og ; they say 
he had lifted a great rock to throw at his enemies, but 
God made a hole in the middle, so that it slipped down 
upon the giant's neck, and he could never rid himself of it. 
Causes of good or evil seem to accumulate, when a 
very slight thing is the beginning of a succession of 
blessings or curses. All things conspire, till the recipi- 
ents of blessings are smothered, or the victims of curses 
are crushed. Till the cup is full, overflowing; till the 
burden is unbearable, merciless ; till good becomes sati- 
ety, or evil cruelty, all the world seems to delight in con- 
tributing or robbing, deifying or anathematizing. 



TYPES. 299 

" Never stoops the soaring vulture 
On his quarry in the desert, 
On the sick or wounded bison, 
But another vulture, watching 
From his high aerial lookout, 
Sees the downward plunge and follows ; 
And a third pursues the second, 
Coming from the invisible ether, 
First a speck, and then a vulture, 
Till the air is dark with pinions. 
So disasters come not singly ; 
But as if they watched and waited, 
Scanning one another's motions, 
When the first descends, the others 
Follow, follow, gathering flock-wise 
Round their victim, sick and wounded, 
First a shadow, then a sorrow, 
Till the air is dark with anguish." 

" What a noise out-of-doors ! " exclaimed Souvestre's 
Philosopher from his attic in Paris. " What is the mean- 
ing of all these shouts and cries ? Ah ! I recollect : this 
is the last day of the carnival, and the maskers are pass- 
ing. Christianity has not been able to abolish the noisy 
bacchanalian festivals of the pagan times, but it has 
changed the names. That which it has given to these 
1 days of liberty ' announces the ending of the feasts, and 
the month of fasting which should follow ; ' carn-a-val ' 
means literally ' down with flesh meat ! ' It is a forty 
days' farewell to the ' blessed pullets and fat hams,' so 
celebrated by Pantagruel's minstrel. Man prepares for 
privation by satiety, and finishes his sins thoroughly be- 
fore he begins to repent. Why, in all ages and among 
every people, do we meet with some one of these mad 
festivals ? Must we believe that it requires such an effort 
for men to be reasonable, that the weaker ones have need 
of rest at intervals. The monks of La Trappe, who are 
condemned to silence by their rule, are allowed to speak 
once in a month, and on this day, they all talk at once 
from the rising to the setting of the sun." 



300 LIBRARY NOTES. 

It is reported of Scaramouche, the first famous Italian 
comedian, that being in Paris, and in great want, he be- 
thought himself of constantly plying near the door of a 
noted perfumer in that city, and when any one came out 
who had been buying snuff, never failed to desire a taste 
of them : when he had by this means got together a 
quantity made up of several different sorts, he sold it 
again at a lower rate to the same perfumer, who, finding 
out the trick, called it " snuff of a thousand flowers." 
The story further tells us that by this means he got a 
very comfortable subsistence, until, making too great 
haste to grow rich, he one day took such an unreason- 
able pinch out of the box of a Swiss officer as engaged 
him in a quarrel, and obliged him to quit this ingenious 
way of life. 

" I remember," says Cumberland, in his Memoirs, 
"the predicament of an ingenious mechanic and artist, 
who, when Rich the harlequin was the great dramatic au- 
thor of his time, and wrote successfully for the stage, 
contrived and executed a most delicious serpent for one 
of those inimitable productions, in which Mr. Rich, justly 
disdaining the weak aid of language, had selected the 
classical fable, if I rightly recollect, of Orpheus and Eu- 
rydice, and, having conceived a very capital part for the 
serpent, was justly anxious to provide himself with a per- 
former who could support a character of that conse- 
quence with credit to himself and his author. The event 
answered his most ardent hopes : nothing could be more 
perfect than his entrances and exits ; nothing ever crawled 
across the stage with more accomplished sinuosity than 
this enchanting serpent ; every one was charmed with its 
performance ; it twirled and twisted, and wriggled itself 
about in so divine a manner, that the whole world was 
ravished by the lovely snake ; nobles and non-nobles, 
rich and poor, old and young, reps and demi-reps, flocked 
to see it and admire it. The artist, who had been the 



TYPES. 301 

master of the movement, was intoxicated with his suc- 
cess ; he turned his hand and head to nothing else but 
serpents ; he made them of all sizes ; they crawled about 
his shop as if he had been chief snake-catcher to the 
furies ; the public curiosity was satisfied with one serpent, 
and he had nests of them yet unsold \ his stock lay dead 
upon his hands, his trade was lost, and the man was 
ruined, bankrupt, and undone." 

Lecky observes that when, after long years of obsti- 
nate disbelief, the reality of the great discovery of Harvey 
dawned upon the medical world, the first result was a 
school of medicine which regarded man simply as an hy- 
draulic machine, and found the principle of every malady 
in imperfections of circulation. 

In the Arctic region, says Dr. Kane, the frost is so in- 
tense as to burn. Sudden putrefaction of meat takes 
place at a temperature of thirty-five degrees below zero. 
The Greenlanders consider extreme cold as favorable to 
putrefaction. The Esquimaux withdraw the viscera im- 
mediately after death, and fill the cavity with stones. Dr. 
Kane was told that the musk ox is sometimes tainted 
after five minutes exposure to great cold. In Italy, south 
of the great ailuvial plain of Lombardy, and away from 
the immediate sea-coast, the lakes occupy the craters of 
extinguished volcanoes. In Arabia, travelers declare, 
the silence of the desert is so profound that it soon 
ceases to be soothing or solemn, and becomes absolutely 
painful, if not appalling. In Java, that magnificent and 
fearful clime, the most lovely flowers are found to con- 
ceal hidden reptiles ; the most tempting fruits are tinc- 
tured with subtle poisons ; there grow those splendid 
trees whose shadow is death ; there the vampire, an 
enormous bat, sucks the blood of the victims whose sleep 
he prolongs, by wafting over them an air full of freshness 
and perfume. Darwin, in his Voyage, speaks of the 
strange mixture of sound and silence which pervades the 



302 LIBRARY NOTES. 

shady parts of the wood on the shore of Brazil. The 
noise from the insects is so loud that it may be heard 
even in a vessel anchored several hundred yards from 
the shore; yet within the recesses of the forest a uni- 
versal silence appears to reign. At Syracuse, an English 
gentleman was taken to a dirty cistern ; seventy women 
were washing, with their clothes tucked up, and them- 
selves standing in a pool, — a disgusting scene. " What 
do you bring me here for ? " said he to the guide. " Why, 
sir, this is the Fountain of Arethusa." In the Fourth 
Circle of Dante's Hell are the souls of the Prodigal and 
the Avaricious : they are forever rolling great weights, 
and forever smiting each other. " To all eternity," says 
the poet, " they shall continue butting one another." A 
dung-hill at a distance, said Coleridge, sometimes smells 
like musk, and a dead dog like elder-flowers. Scargill 
declared that an Englishman is never happy but when he 
is miserable ; a Scotchman is never at home but when he 
is abroad ; an Irishman is at peace only when he is fight- 
ing. The melancholy, says Horace, hate the merry, the 
jocose the melancholy ; the volatile dislike the sedate, 
the indolent the stirring and vivacious ; the modest man 
generally carries the look of a churl. Meyer, in conver- 
sation with Goethe, said he saw a shoemaker in Italy who 
hammered his leather upon the antique marble head of a 
Roman emperor. The lark, that sings out of the sky, 
purifies himself, like the pious Mussulman, in the dust of 
the ground. The nightingale, they say, sings with his 
breast against a thorn. The fragrant white pond lily 
springs from the same black mud out of which the yel- 
low lily sucks its obscene life and noisome odor. An 
elephant, that no quadruped has the temerity to attack, 
is said to be the favorite victim of a worm that bores into 
his foot and slowly tortures him to death. A gnat, ac- 
cording to a tradition of the Arabs, overcame the mighty 
Nimrod. Enraged at the destruction of his gods by the 



TYPES. 303 

prophet Abraham, he sought to slay him, and waged war 
against him. But the prophet prayed to God, and said, 
" Deliver me, God, from this man, who worships stones, 
and boasts himself to be the lord of all beings ; " and 
God said to him, " How shall I punish him ? " And the 
prophet answered, " To Thee armies are as nothing, and 
the strength and power of men likewise. Before the 
smallest of thy creatures will they perish." And God 
was pleased at the faith of the prophet, and he sent a 
gnat, which vexed Nimrod night and day, so that he built 
a room of glass in his palace, that he might dwell therein, 
and shut out the insect. But the gnat entered also, and 
passed by his ear into his brain, upon which it fed, and 
increased in size day by day, so that the servants of Nim- 
rod beat his head with a hammer continually, that he 
might have some ease from his pain ; but he died, after 
suffering these torments for four hundred years. 

"The grandiose statues of Michel Angelo," said a 
traveler, descanting upon the art and architecture of old 
Rome, " appear to the greatest advantage under the bold 
arches of Bramante. There — between those broad lines, 
under those prodigious curves — placed in one of those 
courts, or near one of the great temples where the per- 
spective is incomplete — the statues of Michel Angelo dis- 
play their tragic attitudes, their gigantic members, which 
seem animated by a ray from the divinity, and struggling 
to mount from earth to heaven. Bramante and Michel 
Angelo detested but completed each other. Thus it is 
often in human nature. Those two men knew not that 
they were laborers in the same work. And history is 
silent upon such points till death has passed over her 
heroes. Armies have fought until they have been almost 
annihilated on the field of battle ; men have hated and 
injured one another by their calumnies ; the learned and 
powerful persecute and seek to blot their fellows from the 
earth, as if there was not air and space for all ; they 



304 LIBRARY NOTES. 

know not, blinded by their passions, and warped by the 
prejudices of envy, that the future will blend them in the 
same glory, that to posterity they will represent but one 
sentiment. Bramante and Michel Angelo, enemies during 
life, are reconciled in immortality." 

See how the extremes in morals and legislation met 
during the few years of English history covering the Pro- 
tectorate and the Restoration. Puritanism and liberty of 
conscience, whose exponents were Cromwell and Milton, 
met licentiousness and corrupted loyalty, with Charles II. 
and Wycherley for representatives. Cromwell was " Puri- 
tanism armed and in power ; " Milton was its apostle and 
poet. Charles II. was kingcraft besotted ; Wycherley its 
jester and pimp. Cromwell — farmer, preacher, soldier, 
party leader, prince — radical, stern, hopeful ; Charles — 
debauchee, persecuting skeptic, faithless ruler ; Milton — 
lofty in his Paradise ; Wycherley — nasty in his Love in 
a Wood, and Country Wife. " A larger soul never dwelt 
in a house of clay," said one who had been much about 
Cromwell, after his death, when flattery was mute. " Old 
Goat " was the name given to Charles by one who knew 
him best. Cromwell, " after all his battles and storms, and 
all the plots of assassins against his life, died of grief at 
the loss of his favorite daughter, and of watching at her 
side." Charles went out of life in a fit, the result of his 
horrible excesses, if not of poison, — as said and believed 
by many, administered by one of his own numerous mis- 
tresses. 

First, "the Puritans," says Macaulay, "interdicted, 
under heavy penalties, the use of the Book of Common 
Prayer, not only in churches, but in private houses. It 
was a crime in a child to read by the bedside of a sick 
parent one of those beautiful collects which had soothed 
the griefs of forty generations of Christians. Severe pun- 
ishments were denounced against such as should presume 
to blame the Calvinistic mode of worship. Clergymen 



TYPES. 305 

of respectable character were not only ejected from their 
benefices by thousands, but were frequently exposed to 
the outrages of a fanatical rabble. Churches and sepul- 
chres, fine works of art and curious remains of antiquity, 
were brutally defaced. The Parliament resolved that all 
pictures in the royal collection which contained repre- 
sentations of Jesus or of the Virgin Mother should be 
burned. Sculpture fared as ill as painting. Nymphs and 
graces, the work of Ionian chisels, were delivered over to 
Puritan stone-masons to be made decent. Against the 
lighter vices the ruling faction waged war with a zeal 
little tempered by humanity or by common-sense. Public 
amusements, from the masks which were exhibited at the 
mansions of the great down to the wrestling matches and 
grinning matches on village greens, were vigorously at- 
tacked. One ordinance directed that all the May-poles 
in England should forthwith be hewn down. One of the 
first resolutions adopted by Barebone's Parliament was 
that no person should be admitted into the public service 
till the house should be satisfied with his real godliness." 
Suddenly the wheel turned. " The same people who, 
by a solemn objurgation, had excluded even the posterity 
of their lawful sovereign, exhausted themselves in festivals 
and rejoicings for his return." Restored royalty "made 
it a crime to attend a dissenting place of worship. A 
single justice of the peace might convict without a jury, 
and might, for a third offense, pass sentence of transpor- 
tation beyond the sea, or for seven years. The whole 
soul of the restored church was in the work of crushing 
the Puritans, and of teaching her disciples to give unto 
Caesar the things which were Caesar's. She had been pil- 
laged and oppressed by the party which preached an au- 
stere morality. She had been restored to opulence and 
honor by libertines. Little as the men of mirth and fash- 
ion were disposed to shape their lives according to her 
precepts, they were yet ready to fight knee-deep in blood 



306 LIBRARY NOTES. 

for her cathedrals and palaces, for every line of her ru- 
bric and every thread of her vestments. If the de- 
bauched cavalier haunted brothels and gambling-houses, 
he at least avoided conventicles. If he ever spoke with- 
out uttering ribaldry and blasphemy, he made some 
amends by his eagerness to send Baxter and Howe to jail 
for preaching and praying. The ribaldry of Etherege 
and Wycherley was, in the presence and under the special 
sanction of the head of the church, publicly recited by 
female lips in female ears, while the author of the Pil- 
grim's Progress languished in a dungeon for the crime of 
proclaiming the gospel to the poor. Then came those 
days never to be recalled without a blush — the days of 
servitude without loyalty, and sensuality without love, of 
dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold 
hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, 
the bigot, and the slave. The caresses of harlots and the 
jests of buffoons regulated the manners of a government 
which had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion 
enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the 
scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Mara- 
natha of every fawning dean. Crime succeeded to crime, 
and disgrace to disgrace, till the race, accursed of God 
and man, was a second time driven forth to wander on 
the face of the earth, and be a by- word and a shaking of 
the head to the nations." 

The morality of the court was exhibited in the charac- 
ter of the sovereign, according to whose ethics " every 
person was to be bought ; but some people haggled more 
about their price than others ; and when this haggling 
was very obstinate and very skillful, it was called by some 
fine name. The chief trick by which clever men kept up 
the price of their abilities was called integrity. The chief 
trick by which handsome women kept up the price of 
their beauty was called modesty. The love of God, the 
love of country, the love of family, the love of friends, 



TYPES. 307 

were phrases of the same sort, delicate and convenient 
synonyms for the love of self." 

A great licentiousness, says Emerson, treads on the 
heels of a reformation. How many times in the history 
of the world has the Luther of the day had to lament the 
decay of piety in his own household ! " Doctor," said his 
wife to Martin Luther, one day, " how is it that, whilst sub- 
ject to papacy, we prayed so often and with such fervor, 
whilst now we pray with the utmost coldness and very 
seldom ? " " The courtiers of Charles II. were very dis- 
solute because the Puritans were too strict ; Addison and 
Steele were respectable because Congreve and Wycherley 
were licentious ; Wesley was zealous because the church 
had become indifferent ; the revolution of 1789 was a re- 
action against the manners of the last century, and the 
revolution in running its course set up a reaction against 
itself." " The drawing a certain positive line in morals," 
says Hazlitt, " beyond which a single false step is irre- 
trievable, makes virtue formal, and vice desperate." 
" Puritanism," says Taine, " had brought on an orgie, and 
fanatics had talked down the virtues." 

" To what a place you come in search of knowledge ! " 
exclaimed a bitter republican to Castelar, in the streets 
of Rome, during the reign of the pope, not long before 
Victor Emanuel. " Here everybody is interested about 
lottery tickets ; no one for an idea of the human brain. 
The commemoration of the anniversary of Shakespeare 
has been prohibited in this city of the arts. Her censor- 
ship is so wise that when a certain writer wished to pub- 
lish a book on the discoveries of Volta, she let loose on 
him the thunders of the Index, thinking it treated of Vol- 
tairianism — a philosophy which leaves neither repose 
nor digestion to our cardinals. On the other hand, a 
cabalistic and astrological book, professing to divine the 
caprices of the lottery, has been printed and published 
under the pontifical seal, as containing nothing contrary 



308 LIBRARY NOTES. 

to religion, morals, or sovereign authority. Rabelais knew 
this city — Rabelais. On arriving, in place of writing a 
dissertation on dogmas, he penned one on lettuces, the 
only good and fresh articles in this cursed dungeon. 
And priest though he was, a priest of the sixteenth cent- 
ury, more religious than our generation, he had a long 
correspondence with the pious Bishop of Maillezais on 
the children of the pope ; for the reverend prelate had 
especially charged him to ascertain whether the Cava- 
liere Pietro Luis Farnese was the lawful or illegitimate 
son of his holiness. Believe me, Rabelais knew Rome." 

An old letter-writer, inditing from Paris, said, " Naked- 
ness is so innocent here ! In a refined city, one gets 
back to the first chapter of Genesis ; the extremes meet, 
and Paradise and Paris get together." 

What opposite characters were the leaders in the Ref- 
ormation. The monks said the egg was laid by Erasmus, 
hatched by Luther. " On the other hand," says Motley, 
" he was reviled for not taking side manfully with the 
reformer. The moderate man received much denuncia- 
tion from zealots on either side. He soon clears himself, 
however, from all suspicions of Lutheranism. He is ap- 
palled by the fierce conflict which rages far and wide. 
He becomes querulous as the mighty besom sweeps away 
sacred dust and consecrated cobwebs. ' Men should not 
attempt everything at once,' he writes, ' but rather step 
by step. That which men cannot approve they must look 
at through the fingers. If the godlessness of mankind 
requires such fierce physicians as Luther, if man cannot 
be healed with soothing ointments and cooling drinks, let 
us hope that God will comfort, as repentant, those whom 
he has punished as rebellious. If the dove of Christ — 
not the owl of Minerva — would only fly to us, some meas- 
ure might be put to the madness of mankind.' Mean- 
time, the man whose talk is not of doves and owls, the 
fierce physician, who deals not with ointments and cooling 



TYPES. 309 

draughts, strides past the crowd of gentle quacks to smite 
the foul disease. Devils, thicker than tiles on house-tops, 
scare him not from his work. Bans and bulls, excommu- 
nications and decrees, are rained upon his head. The 
paternal emperor sends down dire edicts, thicker than 
hail upon the earth. The Holy Father blasts and raves 
from Rome. Louvain doctors denounce, Louvain hang- 
men burn, the bitter, blasphemous books. The immoder- 
ate man stands firm in the storm, demanding argument 
instead of illogical thunder ; shows the hangmen and the 
people, too, outside the Elster gate at Wittenberg, that 
papal bulls will blaze as merrily as heretic scrolls." 

Erasmus was a philosophical thinker ; Luther a bold 
actor. The former would reform by the slow processes 
of education ; the latter by revolution. " Without Eras- 
mus," says Froude, "Luther would have been impossible; 
and Erasmus really succeeded — so much of him as de- 
served to succeed — in Luther's victory." Erasmus said, 
"There is no hope for any good. It is all over with quiet 
learning, thought, piety, and progress ; violence is on one 
side and folly on the other ; and they accuse me of having 
caused it all. If I joined Luther I could only perish with 
him, and I do not mean to run my neck into the halter. 
Popes and emperors must decide matters. I will accept 
what is good, and do as I can with the rest. Peace on 
any terms is better than the justest war." Luther said, 
" I take Erasmus to be the worst enemy that Christ has 
had for a thousand years. Intellect does not understand 
religion, and when it comes to the things of God it laughs 
at them." " Whenever I pray," he said, " I pray for a 
curse upon Erasmus." 

Melancthon was as different from Luther as Erasmus. 
He was the theologian of the three, — so much so that 
the scholars were all jealous of him. Sir Thomas More 
wrote to Erasmus that Tyndale had seen Melancthon in 
Paris ; that Tyndale was afraid " if France should receive 



310 LIBRARY NOTES. 

the word of God by him, it would be confirmed in the 
faith of the Eucharist contrary to the sect of the Wick- 
liffites." "I have been born," said Luther, " to war and 
fight with factions and devils, therefore my books are 
stormy and warlike. I must root out the stumps and 
stocks, cut away the thorns and hedges, fill up the ditches, 
and am the rough forester, to break a path and make 
things ready. But master Philip walks gently and silently, 
tills and plants, sows and waters with pleasure, as God 
has gifted him richly." When Melancthon arose to preach 
on one occasion, he took this for a text : " I am the good 
shepherd." In looking round upon his numerous and re- 
spectable audience, his natural timidity entirely overcame 
him, and he could only repeat the text over and over 
again. Luther, who was in the pulpit with him, at length 
impatiently exclaimed, " You are a very good sheep ! " 
and telling him to sit down, took the same text, and 
preached an excellent discourse from it. 

Coming down to later times, and to characters more 
purely literary, what could more beautifully illustrate the 
harmony of opposites, so often observable in literature 
and life, than the intimacy which existed between Profes- 
sor Wilson and Dr. Blair ? The course and habit of Dr. 
Blair's life " were like the smooth, deep water ; serene, 
undisturbed to outer eye ; and the very repose that was 
about him had a charm for the restless, active energy of 
his friend, who turned to this gentle and meek nature for 
mental rest. I have often seen them sitting together," 
says Mrs. Gordon, " in the quiet retirement of the study, 
perfectly absorbed in each other's presence, like school- 
boys in the abandonment of their love for each other, oc- 
cupying one seat between them, my father, with his arm 
lovingly embracing ' the dear doctor's ' shoulders, play- 
fully pulling the somewhat silvered locks to draw his at- 
tention to something in the tome spread out on their 
knees, from which they were both reading. Such dis- 



TYPES. 311 

cussions as they had together hour upon hour ! Shake- 
speare, Milton — always the loftiest themes — never weary 
in doing honor to the great souls from whom they had 
learnt so much. Their voices were different, too : Dr. 
Blair's soft and sweet as that of a woman ; the professor's 
sonorous, sad, with a nervous tremor : each revealing the 
peculiar character of the man." 

Godwin and Rough (to whom some of Lamb's most 
amusing letters were written) met at a dinner-party for the 
first time. The very next day, it is stated, Godwin called 
on a friend (a fellow-guest) to say how much he liked 
Rough, adding : " By the way, do you think he would lend 
me fifty pounds just now, as I am in want of a little mon- 
ey ? " He had not left his friend an hour before Rough 
came with a like question. He wanted a bill discounted, 
and asked whether his friend thought Godwin would do it 
for him. The habit of both was so well known that some 
persons were afraid to invite them, lest it should lead to 
an application for a loan from some acquaintance who 
chanced to be present. 

Northcote mentioned to Hazlitt an instance of some 
young country people who had to sleep on the floor in the 
same room, and they parted the men from the women by 
some sacks of corn, which served for a line of demar- 
cation and an inviolable partition between them. Hazlitt 
spoke of a countrywoman, who, coming to an inn in the 
west of England, wanted a bed ; and being told they 
had none to spare, still persisted, till the landlady said 
in a joke, " I tell you, good woman, I have none, unless 
you can prevail with the ostler to give you half of his." 
"Well," said she, "if he is a sober, prudent man, I shall 
not mind." The Princess Borghese (Bonaparte's sister), 
who was no saint, sat to Canova for a model, and being 
asked, " If she did not feel a little uncomfortable," an- 
swered, " No, there was a fire in the room." 

In the same character opposite faculties and qualities 



312 



LIBRARY NOTES. 



are sometimes so blended as to give very mysterious re- 
sults. Every reader knows how difficult it often is to 
separate the irony and seriousness of Swift and De Foe, 
so very nicely they run together. Pure imagination is so 
realistic as to appear indubitable truth. The History of 
the Plague is an example ; and Robinson Crusoe : what 
boy ever doubted the truth of the narrative ? or, while he 
was reading them, the adventures of Lemuel Gulliver, in- 
credible as they are ? There is a story of a peasant and 
The Vicar of Wakefield. The dull rustic was a slow 
reader, and could get through but a few pages in a long 
evening ; yet he was absorbed by the story, and read it 
as if it were a veritable history. A wag in the family, 
discerning the situation, thought to amuse himself by put- 
ting back the book-mark each morning nearly to the point 
the man had read from the previous evening, so that it 
turned out he was all winter getting through the little vol- 
ume. When he had finished it, the wag asked him his 
opinion of it. He answered that it was good, — that he 
had no doubt every word of it was true, — but it did seem 
to him there was some repetition in it ! 

A clergyman's widow of eighty, the mother of the first 
Sir David Dundas — at one time commander-in-chief of 
the British army — is thus described by Cockburn : " We 
used to go to her house in Bunker's Hill, [Edinburgh] 
when boys, on Sundays, between the morning and after- 
noon sermons, where we were cherished with Scotch broth 
and cakes, and many a joke from the old lady. Age had 
made her incapable of walking, even across the room ; so, 
clad in a plain black-silk gown, and a pure muslin cap, 
she sat half-encircled by a high-backed, black leather chair, 
reading, with silver spectacles stuck on her thin nose, 
and interspersing her studies and her days with much 
laughter, and not a little sarcasm. What a spirit ! There 
was more fun and sense round that chair than in the thea- 
tre or the church. I remember one of her grand-daugh- 



TYPES. 313 

ters stumbling, in the course of reading the newspapers 
to her, on a paragraph which stated that a lady's reputa- 
tion had suffered from some indiscreet talk on the part of 
the Prince of Wales. Up she of fourscore sat, and said 
with an indignant shake of her shriveled fist and a keen 
voice, — ' The dawmed villain ! does he kiss and tell ! ' " 

In the Barberini palace is the celebrated portrait of 
Beatrice Cenci, by Guido. The melancholy and strange 
history of this beautiful girl has been told in a variety of 
ways, and is probably familiar to every reader. Guido 
saw her on her way to execution, and has painted her as 
she was dressed, in the gray habit and head-dress, made 
by her own hands, and finished but an hour before she 
put it on. " There are engravings and copies of the pict- 
ure all over the world, but none that I have seen," said 
Willis, " give any idea of the excessive gentleness, and 
serenity of the countenance. The eyes retain traces of 
weeping, the child-like mouth, the soft, girlish lines of 
features that look as if they had never worn more than 
the one expression of youthfulness and affection, are all 
in repose, and the head is turned over the shoulder with 
as simple a sweetness as if she had but looked back to 
say a good-night before going to her chamber to sleep. 
She little looks like what she was — one of the firmest 
and boldest spirits whose history is recorded. After 
murdering her father for his fiendish attempts upon her 
virtue, she endured every torture rather than disgrace her 
family by confession, and was only moved from her con- 
stancy, at last, by the agonies of her younger brother on 
the rack. Who would read capabilities like these, in those 
heavenly and child-like features ? " 

There is related an incident of the American civil war 
which illustrates how ignorance and superstition some- 
times give birth to eloquence. An army officer had been 
speaking of the ideas of power entertained by the poor 
negro slaves. He said they had an idea of God, as the 



314 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Almighty, and they had realized in their former condition 
the power of their masters. Up to the time of the arrival 
among them of the Union forces, they had no knowledge 
of any other power. Their masters fled upon the ap- 
proach of the federal soldiers, and this gave the negroes 
a conception of a power greater than that exercised by 
them. This power they called " Massa Linkum." Their 
place of worship was a large building which they called 
" the praise house ; " and the leader of the meeting, a 
venerable black man, was known as " the praise man." 
On a certain day, when there was quite a large gathering 
of the people, considerable confusion was created by dif- 
ferent persons attempting to tell who and what " Massa 
Linkum " was. In the midst of the excitement the white- 
headed leader commanded silence. " Brederin," said he, 
" you don't know nosein' what you 're talkin' 'bout. Now, 
you just listen to me. Massa Linkum, he eberywhar. He 
know eberyting." Then, solemnly looking up, he added, 
" He walk de earf like de Lord ! " 

Curran, who was so merry and charming in conversa- 
tion, was also very melancholy. He said he never went 
to bed in Ireland without wishing not to rise again. It 
seems to be a law of our nature that " as high as we have 
mounted in delight, in our dejection do we sink as low." 
Burns expresses it, " Chords that vibrate sweetest pleas- 
ure, thrill the deepest notes of woe ; " and Hood, " There 's 
not a string attuned to mirth, but has its chord in melan- 
choly ; " and Burton, " Naught so sweet as melancholy," 
naught " so damned as melancholy ; " and King Solomon, 
" I said of laughter, It is mad." 

It is narrated that one day Philip III., King of Spain, 
was standing in one of the balconies of his palace observ- 
ing a young Spanish student, who was sitting in the sun 
and reading a book, while he was bursting out into fits of 
laughter. The farther the student read, the more his 
gayety increased, until at last he was so violently excited 



TYPES. 315 

that he let the book fall from his hands, and rolled on the 
ground in a state of intense hilarity. The king turned to 
his courtiers and said, " That young man is either mad, 
or he is reading Don Quixote." One of the guards of 
the palace went to pick up the book and found that his 
majesty had guessed rightly. Yet Miguel Cervantes, the 
author of this book which is so amusing, had dragged on 
the most wretched and melancholy existence. He was 
groaning and weeping while all Spain was laughing at the 
numerous adventures of the Knight of La Mancha and 
the wise sayings of Sancho Panza. 

The biographer of Grimaldi speaks of the devouring 
melancholy which pursued the celebrated clown whenever 
he was off the stage, or left to his own resources ; and it 
is well known that Liston, whose face was sufficient to set 
an audience in a good humor, was a confirmed hypochon- 
driac. It is said he used to sit up after midnight to read 
Young's Night Thoughts, delighting in its monotonous 
solemnity. 

"The gravest nations,''' says Landor, "have been the 
wittiest ; and in those nations some of the gravest men. 
In England, Swift and Addison ; in Spain, Cervantes. 
Rabelais and La Fontaine are recorded by their country- 
men to have been reveurs. Few men have been graver 
than Pascal ; few have been wittier." Robert Chambers 
tells in one of his essays of a person residing near Lon- 
don, who could make one's sides ache at any time with 
his comic songs, yet had so rueful, woe-begone a face that 
his friends addressed him by the name of Mr. Dismal. 
Nothing remains of Butler's private history but the record 
of his miseries ; and Swift, we are told, was never known 
to smile. Burns confessed in one of his letters that his 
design in seeking society was to fly from constitutional 
melancholy. " Even in the hour of social mirth," he tells 
us, " my gayety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal 
under the hands of the executioner." The most facetious 



3l6 LIBRARY NOTES. 

of all Lamb's letters was written to Barton in a fit of the 
deepest melancholy. 

"The elaboration of humor," said Irving, "is often a 
very serious task ; and we have never witnessed a more 
perfect picture of mental misery than was once presented 
to us by a popular dramatic writer whom we found in the 
agonies of producing a farce which subsequently set the 
theatre in a roar." 

Moliere was a grave and silent man. There is a story 
told of a lady of distinction who invited him to meet a 
party, thinking that he would entertain them with his wit ; 
he came, but throughout the evening scarcely opened his 
lips. At Pezenas they used to show a chair in a barber's 
shop, where he would sit for hours without speaking a 
word. 

Jerrold was a little ashamed of the immense success of 
the Caudle Lectures, many of which were written to dic- 
tation on a bed of sickness, racked by rheumatism. As 
social drolleries they set nations laughing. He took their 
celebrity rather sulkily. He did not like to be talked of 
as a funny man. His mixture of satire and kindliness 
reminded one of his friends of those lanes near Beyrout, 
in which you ride with the prickly-pear bristling alongside 
of you, and yet can pluck the grapes which force them- 
selves among it from the fields. 

There is an account of a singer and his wife who were 
to sing a number of humorous couplets at a restaurant in 
Leipsic. The wife made her appearance there at the ap- 
pointed hour, but, owing to the unexplained absence of 
her husband, she was compelled to amuse the visitors by 
singing couplets alone. While her droll performance was 
eliciting shouts of laughter, her husband hung himself in 
the court-yard of the restaurant. 

Some one said to Dr. Johnson that it seemed strange 
that he, who so often delighted his company by his lively 
conversation, should say he was miserable. "Alas ! it is all 



TYPES. 317 

outside," replied the sage ; " I may be cracking my joke 
and cursing the sun : sun, how I hate thy beams ! " " Are 
we to think Pope was happy," said he, on another occa- 
sion, " because he says so in his writings ? We see in his 
writings what he wished the state of his mind to appear. 
Dr. Young, who pined for preferment, talks with contempt 
of it in his writings, and affects to despise everything he 
did not despise." The author of John Gilpin said of 
himself and his humorous poetry, " Strange as it may 
seem, the most ludicrous lines I ever wrote have been 
when in the saddest mood, and but for that saddest mood, 
perhaps, would never have been written at all." Sir Wal- 
ter Scott, in the height of his ill-fortune, was ever giving 
vent in his diary or elsewhere to some whimsical outburst 
or humorous sally, and after an extra gay entry in his 
journal just before leaving his dingy Edinburgh lodgings 
for Abbotsford, he follows it up next day with this bit of 
self-portraiture : " Anybody would think from the fal-de- 
ral conclusion of my journal of yesterday that I left town 
in a very good humor. But nature has given me a kind 
of buoyancy — I know not what to call it — that mingles 
with my deepest afflictions and most gloomy hours. I 
have a secret pride — I fancy it will be most truly termed 
— which impels me to mix with my distress strange 
snatches of mirth which have no mirth in them." 

The Grand Duke of Weimar, entertaining an American 
author at his table, spoke of Poe, whose poem of The Ra- 
ven he had never heard of until the evening previous. 
" The conception is terrible," he said. " Of course the 
Raven can only symbolize Despair, and he makes it perch 
upon the bust of Pallas, as if Despair even broods over 
Wisdom." 

The Chronicle of Liineburg, says Heine, " records that 
during the year 1480 there were whistled and sung through- 
out all Germany certain songs, which for sweetness and 
tenderness surpassed any previously known in German 



3l8 LIBRARY NOTES. 

realms. Young and old, and the women in particular, 
were quite bewitched by these ballads, which might be 
heard the livelong day. But these songs, so the chronicle 
goes on to say, were composed by a young priest who 
was afflicted with leprosy and lived a forlorn, solitary life, 
secluded from all the world. You are surely aware, gentle 
reader, what a horrible disease was leprosy during the 
Middle Ages, and how the wretched beings afflicted with 
this incurable malady were driven out from all society, 
and from the abodes of men, and were forbidden to ap- 
proach any human being. Living corpses, they wandered 
to and fro, muffled from head to foot, a hood drawn over 
the face, and carrying in the hand a bell, the Lazarus-bell, 
as it was called, through which they were to give timely 
warning of their approach, so that every one could avoid 
their path. The poor priest, whose fame as a lyric poet 
the chronicle praised so highly, was such a leper ; and 
while all Germany, shouting and jubilant, sang and whis- 
tled his songs, he, a wretched outcast, in the desolation 
of his misery sat sorrowful and alone." 

" There have been times in my life," said Goethe, 
" when I have fallen asleep in tears ; but in my dreams 
the most charming forms have come to console and to 
cheer me." 

After Scott began the Bride of Lammermoor, he had 
one of his terrible seizures of cramp, yet during his tor- 
ment he dictated that fine novel ; and when he rose from 
his bed, and the published book was placed in his hands, 
" he did not," James Ballantyne explicitly assured Lock- 
hart, " recollect one single incident, character, or conver- 
sation it contained." 

Jean Paul wrote a great part of his comic romance 
(Nicholas Margraf) in an agony of heart-break from the 
death of his promising son Max. He could not, one of 
his biographers says, bear the sight of any book his son 
had touched ; and the word philology (the science in 



TYPES. 319 

which Max excelled) went through his heart like a bolt 
of ice. He had such wonderful power over himself as to 
go on with his comic romance while his eyes continually 
dropped tears. He wept so much in secret that his eyes 
became impaired, and he trembled for the total loss of 
sight. Wine, that had previously, after long sustained 
labor, been a cordial to him, he could not bear to touch ; 
and after employing the morning in writing, he spent the 
whole afternoon lying on the sofa in his wife's apartment, 
his head supported by her arm. 

Washington Irving completed that most extravagantly 
humorous of all his works — the History of New York — 
while he was suffering from the death of his sweetheart, 
Matilda Hoffman, which nearly broke his heart. He 
says, in a memorandum found amongst his private papers 
after his death, " She was but about seventeen years old 
when she died. I cannot tell what a horrid state of 
mind I was in for a long time. I seemed to care for 
nothing ; the world was a blank to me. I went into the 
country, but could not bear solitude, yet could not enjoy 
society. There was a dismal horror continually in my 
mind, that made me fear to be alone. I had often to get 
up in the night, and seek the bedroom of my brother, as 
if the having a human being by me would relieve me 

from the frightful gloom of my own thoughts 

When I became more calm and collected, I applied my- 
self, by way of occupation, to the finishing of my work. 
I brought it to a close, as well as I could, and published 
it ; but the time and circumstances in which it was pro- 
duced rendered me almost unable to look upon it with 
satisfaction. Still it took with the public, and gave me 
celebrity, as an original work was something remarkable 

and uncommon in America I seemed to drift 

about without aim or object, at the mercy of every 
breeze ; my heart wanted anchorage. I was naturally 
susceptible, and tried to form other attachments, but my 



320 LIBRARY NOTES. 

heart would not hold on ; it would continually roam to 
what it had lost ; and whenever there was a pause in the 
hurry of novelty and excitement, I would sink into dis- 
mal dejection. For years I could not talk on the subject 
of this hopeless regret ; I could not even mention her 
name ; but her image was continually before me, and I 
dreamt of her incessantly." 

Heine, for several years preceding his death, was a 
miserable paralytic. All that time, it is stated, he lay 
upon a pile of mattresses, racked by pain and exhausted 
by sleeplessness, till his body was reduced below all nat- 
ural dimensions, and his long beard fell over the coverlet 
like swan's down or a baby's hair. The muscular debil- 
ity was such that he had to raise the eyelid with his hand 
when he wished to see the face of any one about him ; 
and thus in darkness, he thought, and listened, and dic- 
tated, preserving to the very last his clearness of intellect, 
his precision of diction, and his invincible humor. 

The wretchedness of poor Scarron, at whose jests, bur- 
lesques, and buffooneries all France was laughing, may be 
guessed at from his own description. His form, to use 
his own words, " had become bent like a Z." " My legs,'' 
he adds, ''first made an obtuse angle with my thighs, 
then a right and at last an acute angle ; my thighs made 
another with my body. My head is bent upon my chest ; 
my arms are contracted as well as my legs, and my fin- 
gers as well as my arms. I am, in truth, a pretty com- 
plete abridgment of human misery." His head was too 
big for his diminutive stature, one eye was set deeper 
than the other, and his teeth were the color of wood. At 
the time of his marriage (to the beautiful and gifted 
Mademoiselle d'Aubigne, afterward Madame de Mainte- 
non, the wife for thirty years of Louis XIV. !) he could 
only move with freedom his hand, tongue, and eyes. His 
days were passed in a chair with a hood, and so com- 
pletely the abridgment of man he describes himself, that 



TYPES. 321 

his wife had to kneel to look in his face. He could not 
be moved without screaming from pain, nor sleep without 
taking opium. The epitaph which he wrote on himself is 
touching from its truth : — 

" Tread softly — make no noise 
To break his slumbers deep ; 
Poor Scarron here enjoys 

His first calm night of sleep." 

Balzac said of him, " I have often met in antiquity with 
pain that was wise, and with pain that was eloquent ; but 
I never before saw pain joyous, nor found a soul merrily- 
cutting capers in a paralytic frame." He continued to 
jest to the last ; and seeing the bystanders in tears, he 
said, " I shall never, my friends, make you weep as much 
as I have made you laugh." 

Many of Hood's most humorous productions were dic- 
tated to his wife, while he himself was in bed from dis- 
tressing and protracted sickness. His own family was 
the only one which was not delighted with the Comic An- 
nual, so well thumbed in every house. " We, ourselves," 
writes his son, " did not enjoy it till the lapse of many 
years had mercifully softened down some of the sad rec- 
ollections connected with it." Fun and suffering seemed 
to be natural to him, and to be constantly helping each 
other. When a boy, he drew the figure of a demon with 
the smoke of a candle on the staircase ceiling near his 
bedroom door, to frighten his brother. Unfortunately he 
forgot that he had done so, and, when he went to bed, 
succeeded in terrifying himself into fits almost — while 
his brother had not observed the picture. Joke he would,, 
suffering as he might be. It is recorded of him, that 
upon a mustard plaster being applied to his attenuated 
feet, as he lay in the direst extremity, he was heard fee- 
bly to remark that there was "very little meat for the 
mustard." But if his wit was marvelous, so was his pa- 
thos — tender beyond comparison. His first child scarcely 
21 



322 LIBRARY NOTES. 

survived its birth. " In looking over some old papers," 
says his son, " I found a few tiny curls of golden hair, as 
soft as the finest silk, wrapped in a yellow and time-worn 
paper, inscribed in my father's handwriting : — 

' Little eyes that scarce did see, 
Little lips that never smiled ; 
Alas ! my little dear dead child, 
Death is thy father, and not me ; 
I but embraced thee soon as he ! ' " 

Here are a few sentences from the long letters which 
the author of the Bridge of Sighs wrote to the children 
of his friend, Dr. Elliot, then residing at Sandgate, al- 
most from his death-bed : " My dear Jeanie, — So you 
are at Sandgate ! Of course, wishing for your old play 
fellow to help you to make little puddles in the sand, and 
swing on the gate. But perhaps there are no sand and 
gate at Sandgate, which, in that case, nominally tells us a 

fib I have heard that you bathe in the sea, 

which is very refreshing, but it requires care ; for if you 
stay under water too long, you may come up a mermaid, 
who is only half a lady, with a fish's tail — which she can 
boil if she likes. You had better try this with your doll, 
whether it turns her into half a 'doll-fin.' .... I hope 
you like the sea. I always did when I was a child, which 
was about two years ago. Sometimes it makes such a 
fizzing and foaming, I wonder some of our London cheats 
do not bottle it up and sell it for ginger-pop. When the 
sea is too rough, if you pour the sweet oil out of the 
cruet all over it, and wait for a calm, it will be quite 

smooth — much smoother than a dressed salad 

Do you ever see any boats or vessels ? And don't you 
-wish, when you see a ship, that somebody was a sea-cap- 
tain instead of a doctor, that he might bring you home a 
pet lion, or calf-elephant, ever so many parrots, or a 
monkey from foreign parts ? I knew a little girl who was 
prp.i»is©d a baby-whale by her sailor-brother, and who 



TYPES. 323 

blubbered because he did not bring it. I suppose there 
are no whales at Sandgate, but you might find a seal 
about the beach ; or at least a stone for one. The sea- 
stones are not pretty when they are dry, but look beauti- 
ful when they are wet — and we can always keep sucking 
them ! " To Jeanie's brother, among other things he 
writes, " I used to catch flat-fish with a very long string 
line. It was like swimming a kite. Once I caught a 
plaice, and seeing it all over red spots, thought I had 
caught the measles." .To Mary Elliot, a still more youth- 
ful correspondent, he says, " I remember that when I saw 
the sea, it used sometimes to be very fussy and fidgety, 
and did not always wash itself quite clean ; but it was 
very fond of fun. Have the waves ever run after you 
yet, and turned your little two shoes into pumps, full of 
water ? Have you been bathed yet in the sea, and were 
you afraid? I was the first time, and the time before 
that ; and, dear me, how I kicked and screamed — or, at 
least, meant to scream ; but the sea, ships and all, began 
to run into my mouth, and so I shut it up. I think I see 
you being dipped into the sea, screwing your eyes up, 
and putting your nose, like a button, into your mouth, 
like a button-hole, for fear of getting another smell and 
taste. Did you ever try, like a little crab, to run two 
ways at once ? See if you can do it, for it is good fun ; 

never mind tumbling over yourself a little at first 

And now good-by ; Fanny has made my tea, and I must 
drink it before it gets too hot, as we all were last Sunday 
week. They say the glass was eighty-eight in the shade, 
which is a great age. The last fair breeze I blew doz- 
ens of kisses for you, but the wind changed, and, I am 

afraid, took them all to Miss H , or somebody that it 

should n't." 

You remember the anecdote Southey repeats in his 
Doctor, of a physician who, being called in to an un- 
known patient, found him suffering under the deepest de- 



324 LIBRARY NOTES. 

pression of mind, without any discoverable disease, or 
other assignable cause. The physician advised him to 
seek for cheerful objects, and recommended him espe- 
cially to go to the theatre and see a famous actor then in 
the meridian of his powers, whose comic talents were un- 
rivaled. Alas ! the comedian who kept crowded theatres 
in a roar was this poor hypochondriac himself ! 



XII. 

CONDUCT. 

Hazlitt, in one of his discursive essays, says, " I 
stopped these two days at Bridgewater, and when I was 
tired of sauntering on the banks of its muddy river, re- 
turned to the inn and read Camilla. So have I loitered 
my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to 
plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. 
I have wanted only one thing to make me happy ; but 
wanting that have wanted everything." Alas ! who has 
not wanted one thing? Fortunatus had a cap, which 
when he put on, and wished himself anywhere, behold he 
was there. Aladdin had a lamp, which if he rubbed, and 
desired anything, immediately it was his. If we each 
had both, there would still be something wanting — one 
thing more. Donatello's matchless statue of St. George 
"wanted one thing," in the opinion of Michel Angelo ; 
it wanted " the gift of speech." The poor widow in Hol- 
land that Pepys tells us about in his Diary, who survived 
twenty-five husbands, wanted one thing more, no doubt — 
perhaps one more husband. " Hadst thou Samson's hair, 
Milo's strength, Scanderbeg's arm, Solomon's wisdom, Ab- 
salom's beauty, Croesus's wealth, Caesar's valor, Alexan- 
der's spirit, Tully's or Demosthenes's eloquence, Gyges's 
ring, Perseus's Pegasus, and Gorgon's head, Nestor's years 
to come, all this," saith Burton, "would not make thee 
absolute, give thee content and true happiness in this life, 
or so continue it." Proverbially, we never are, but always 
to be, blest. " A child," said the good Sachs, " thinks 
the stars blossom on the trees; when he climbs to the 



326 LIBRARY NOTES. 

tree-tops, he fancies they cluster on the spire ; when he 
climbs the spire, he finds, to reach them, he must leave 
the earth and go to heaven." There is an old German 
engraving, in the manner of Holbein, which represents an 
aged man near a grave, wringing his hands. Death, be- 
hind, directs his attention to heaven. In the palace Sci- 
arra is a very expressive picture by Schedone. On the 
ruins of an old tomb stands a skull, beneath which is 
written — " I, too, was of Arcadia ; " and, at a little dis- 
tance, gazing at it in attitudes of earnest reflection, stand 
two shepherds, struck simultaneously with the moral. 
What we have is nothing, what we want, everything. " All 
worldly things," says Baxter, " appear most vain and un- 
satisfactory, when we have tried them most." The prize 
we struggled for, which filled our imagination, when at- 
tained was not much ; worthless in grasp, priceless in ex- 
pectation. The one thing we want is one thing we have 
not — that we have not had. 

" I saw the little boy, 

In thought how oft that he 
Did wish of God, to scape the rod, 
A tall young man to be. 

" The young man eke that feels 
His bones with pain opprest, 
How he would be a rich old man, 
To live and lie at rest : 

" The rich old man that sees 
His end draw on so sore, 
How he would be a boy again, 
To live so much the more." 

This hunger, this hope, this longing, is our best posses- 
sion at last, and fades not away, unsubstantial as it may 
seem. It builds for each one of us magnificent castles. 
" All the years of our youth and the hopes of our man- 
hood are stored away, like precious stones, in the vaults ; 
and we know that we shall find everything convenient, 



CONDUCT. 327 

elegant, and splendid, when we come into possession." 
Curtis, in one of his exquisite sketches, treats this ele- 
ment of us as no other author has. He calls it his Span- 
ish property. "I am the owner," he says, "of great 
estates ; but the greater part are in Spain. It is a country 
famously romantic, and my castles are all of perfect pro- 
portions, and appropriately set in the most picturesque 
situations. I have never been to Spain myself, but I 
have, naturally, conversed much with travelers to that 
country, although, I must allow, without deriving from 
them much substantial information about my property 
there. The wisest of them told me that there were more 
holders of real estate in Spain than in any other region 
he had ever heard of, and they are all great proprietors. 
Every one of them possesses a multitude of the stateliest 
castles. From conversation with them you easily gather 
that each one considers his own castles much the largest 

and in the loveliest positions It is remarkable that 

none of the proprietors have ever been to Spain to take 
possession and report to the rest of us the state of our 
property there. I, of course, cannot go, I am too much 
engaged. So is Titbottom. And I find that it is the case 
with all the proprietors. We have so much to detain us 
at home that we cannot get away. It is always so with 

rich men It is not easy for me to say how I know 

so much as I certainly do about my castles in Spain. The 
sun always shines upon them. They stand large and 
fair in a luminous, golden atmosphere, a little hazy and 
dreamy, perhaps, like the Indian summer, but in which no 
gales blow and there are no tempests. All the sublime 
mountains, and beautiful valleys, and soft landscapes, that 
I have not yet seen, are to be found in the grounds. 
They command a noble view of the Alps ; so fine, indeed, 
that I should be quite content with the prospect of them 
from the highest tower of my castle, and not care to go 
to Switzerland. The neighboring ruins, too, are as pict- 



328 LIBRARY NOTES. 

uresque as those of Italy, and my desire of standing in 
the Coliseum and of seeing the shattered arches of the 
aqueducts, stretching along the Campagna, and melting 
into the Alban Mount, is entirely quenched. The rich 
gloom of my orange groves is gilded by fruit as brilliant 
of complexion and exquisite of flavor as any that ever 
dark-eyed Sorrento girls, looking over the high plastered 
walls of Southern Italy, hand to the youthful travelers, 
climbing on donkeys up the narrow lane beneath. The 
Nile flows through my grounds. The Desert lies upon 
their edge, and Damascus stands in my garden. "I am 
given to understand, also, that the Parthenon has been 
removed to my Spanish possessions. The Golden Horn 
is my fish preserve ; my flocks of golden fleece are past- 
ured on the plain of Marathon, and the honey of Hy- 
mettus is distilled from the flowers that grow in the vale 
of Enna — all in my Spanish domains. From the win- 
dows of these castles look the beautiful women whom I 
have never seen, whose portraits the poets have painted. 
They wait for me there, and chiefly the fair-haired child, 
lost to my eye so long ago, now bloomed into an impossi- 
ble beauty. The lights that never shone glance at even- 
ing in the vaulted halls, upon banquets that were never 
spread. The bands I have never collected play all night 
long, and enchant the brilliant company, that was never 
assembled, into silence. In the long summer mornings 
the children that I never had, play in the gardens that I 

never planted I have often wondered how I shall 

ever reach my castles. The desire of going comes over 
me very strongly sometimes, and I endeavor to see how I 
can arrange my affairs so as to get away. To tell the 
truth, I am not quite sure of the route, — I mean, to that 
particular part of Spain in which my estates lie. I have 
inquired very particularly, but nobody seems to know pre- 
cisely Will you tell me what you consider the 

shortest and safest route thither, Mr. Bourne ? for, of 



CONDUCT. 329 

course, a man who drives such an immense trade with all 
parts of the world will know all that I have come to in- 
quire.' ' My dear sir,' answered he, wearily, ' I have been 
trying all my life to discover it ; but none of my ships 
have ever been there — none of my captains have any 
report to make. They bring me, as they brought my 
father, gold-dust from Guinea \ ivory, pearls, and precious 
stones from every part of the earth ; but not a fruit, not a 
solitary flower, from one of my castles in Spain. I have 
sent clerks, agents, and travelers of all kinds ; philoso- 
phers, pleasure-hunters, and invalids, in all sorts of ships, 
to all sorts of places, but none of them ever saw or heard 
of my castles, except one young poet, and he died in a 
mad-house.' .... At length I resolved to ask Titbottom 
if he had ever heard of the best route to our estates. He 
said that he owned castles, and sometimes there was an 

expression in his face as if he saw them 'I have 

never known but two men who reached their estates in 
Spain.' 'Indeed,' said I, 'how did they go ? ' 'One went 
over the side of a ship, and the other out of a third story 
window,' answered Titbottom. ' And I know one man 
that resides upon his estates constantly,' continued he. 
' Who is that ? ' ' Our old friend Slug, whom you may see 
any day at the asylum, just coming in from the hunt, or 
going to call upon his friend the Grand Lama, or dressing 
for the wedding of the Man in the Moon, or receiving an 
embassador from Timbuctoo. Whenever I go to see him, 
Slug insists that I am the pope, disguised as a journey- 
man carpenter, and he entertains me in the most distin- 
guished manner. He always insists upon kissing my foot, 
and I bestow upon him, kneeling, the apostolic benedic- 
tion. This is the only Spanish proprietor in posses- 
sion, with whom I am acquainted.' .... Ah ! if the true 
history of Spain could be written, what a book were 
there ! " 



330 LIBRARY NOTES. 

" Gayly bedight, 

A gallant knight, 
In sunshine and in shadow, 

Had journeyed long, 

Singing a song, 
In search of Eldorado. 

" But he grew old, 

This knight so bold, 
And o'er his heart a shadow 

Fell as he found 

No spot of ground 
That looked like Eldorado. 

" And as his strength 

Failed him at length, 

He met a pilgrim shadow : 

' Shadow,' said he, 

' Where can it be — 

This land of Eldorado ? ' 

" ' Over the Mountains 
Of the Moon, 
Down the valley of shadow, 
Ride, boldly ride,' 
The shade replied, 
' If you seek for Eldorado ! ' " 

Steele, in a paper of The Spectator, dilates in this 
vein. " I am," he says, " one of that species of men 
who are properly denominated castle-builders, who scorn 
to be beholden to the earth for a foundation, or dig in 
the bowels of it for materials ; but erect their structures 
in the most unstable of elements, the air ; fancy alone 
laying the line, marking the extent, and shaping the 
model. It would be difficult to enumerate what august 
palaces and stately porticoes have grown under my form- 
ing imagination, or what verdant meadows and shady 
groves have started into being by the powerful feat of a 
warm fancy. A castle-builder is ever just what he pleases, 
and as such I have grasped imaginary sceptres, and de- 



CONDUCT. 33I 

livered uncontrollable edicts, from a throne to which con- 
quered nations yielded obeisance. There is no art or 
profession, whose most celebrated masters I have not 
eclipsed. Wherever I have afforded my salutary pres- 
ence, fevers have ceased to burn and agues to shake the 
human fabric. When an eloquent fit has been upon me, 
an apt gesture and proper cadence has animated each 
sentence, and gazing crowds have found their passions 
worked up into a rage, or soothed into a calm. I am 
short, and not very well made ; yet upon sight of a fine 
woman, I have stretched into proper stature, and killed 
with a good air and mien. These are the gay phantoms 
that dance before my waking eyes, and compose my day- 
dreams. I should be the most contented happy man 
alive, were the chimerical happiness which springs from 
the paintings of fancy less fleeting and transitory. But 
alas ! it is with grief of mind I tell you, the least breath 
of wind has often demolished my magnificent edifices, 
swept away my groves, and left no more trace of them 
than if they had never been. My exchequer has sunk 
and vanished by a rap on my door, the salutation of a 
friend has cost me a whole continent, and in the same 
moment I have been pulled by the sleeve, my crown has 
fallen from my head. The ill consequence of these rev- 
eries is inconceivably great, seeing the loss of imaginary 
possessions makes impressions of real woe. Besides, bad 
economy is visible and apparent in builders of invisible 
mansions. My tenants' advertisements of ruins and di- 
lapidations often cast a damp on my spirits, even in the 
instant when the sun, in all his splendor, gilds my East- 
ern palaces." 

" Alas ! " cries Heine, in his Confessions, " fame, once 
sweet as sugared pine-apple and flattery, has for a long 
time been nauseous to me ; it tastes as bitter to me now 
as wormwood. With Romeo I can say, ' I am the fool of 
fortune.' The bowl stands full before me, but I lack the 



332 LIBRARY NOTES. 

spoon. What does it avail me that at banquets my 
health is pledged in the choicest wines, drunk from 
golden goblets, if at the same time I, with all that makes 
life pleasant denied to me, may only wet my lips with an 
insipid, disagreeable, medicinal drink ? What benefit is 
it to me that enthusiastic youths and maidens crown my 
marble bust with laurel wreaths, if meanwhile the shriv- 
eled fingers of an aged hired nurse press a blister of 
Spanish flies to the back of my head? What does it 
avail me that all the roses of Sharon tenderly glow and 
bloom for me ? Alas ! Sharon is two thousand miles 
away from the Rue d' Amsterdam, where I in the dreary 
solitude of my sick-room have nothing to smell, unless it 
be the perfume of warmed-over poultices." 

" When I look around me," said Goethe, " and see 
how few of the companions of earlier years are left to 
me, I think of a summer residence at a bathing-place. 
When you arrive, you first become acquainted with those 
who have already been there some weeks, and who leave 
you in a few days. This separation is painful. Then 
you turn to the second generation, with which you live a 
good while, and become really intimate. But this goes 
also, and leaves us lonely with the third, which comes just 
as we are going away, and with which we have, properly, 

nothing to do I have ever been considered one 

of Fortune's chiefest favorites ; nor can I complain of 
the course my life has taken. Yet, truly, there has been 
nothing but toil and care ; and in my seventy-fifth year, 
I may say that I have never had four weeks of genuine 
pleasure. The stone was ever to be rolled up anew." 

"What a multitude of past friends can I number 
amongst the dead ! " exclaimed another venerable worthy 
in literature. " It is the melancholy consequence of old 
age ; if we outlive our feelings we are nothing worth ; if 
they remain in force, a thousand sad occurrences remind 
us that we live too long." It was Sir William Temple's 



CONDUCT. 333 

opinion that " life is like wine ; who would drink it pure 
must not draw it to the dregs." Dr. Sherlock thought 
" the greatest part of mankind have great reason to be 
contented with the shortness of life, because they have 
no temptation to wish it longer." De Tocqueville said, 
" Man is a traveler toward a colder and colder region, 
and the higher his latitude, the faster ought to be his 
walk. The great malady of the soul is cold. It must be 
combated by activity and exertion, by contact with one's 
fellow-creatures, and with the business of the world. In 
these days one must not live upon what one has already 
learnt, one must learn more ; and instead of sleeping 
away our acquired ideas, we should seek for fresh ones, 
make the new opinions fight with the old ones, and those 
of youth with those of an altered state of thought and of 
society." 

The following authentic memorial was found in the 
closet of Abdalrahman, who established the throne of 
Cordova, and who, during his life, enjoyed thousands of 
wives, millions upon millions of wealth, and was the 
object of universal admiration and envy : " I have now 
reigned above fifty years in victory or peace ; beloved by 
my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by 
my allies. Riches and honor, power and pleasure, have 
waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear 
to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation I 
have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine 
happiness which have fallen to my lot : they amount to 
fourteen. O man, place not thy confidence in this pres- 
ent world ! " 

Voltaire makes Candide sit down to supper at Venice 
with six strangers who were staying at the same hotel 
with himself, and as the servants, to his astonishment, 
addressed each of them by the title of " your majesty," 
he asked for an explanation of the pleasantry. " I am 
not jesting," said the first, " I am Achmet III. ; I was 



334 LIBRARY NOTES. 

sultan several years ; I dethroned my brother, and my 
nephew dethroned me. They have cut off the heads of 
my viziers ; I shall pass the remainder of my days in the 
old seraglio ; my nephew, the Sultan Mahmoud, some- 
times permits me to travel for my health, and I have 
come to pass the Carnival at Venice." A young man 
who was close to Achmet spoke next, and said, " My 
name is Ivan • I have been Emperor of all the Russias ; 
I was dethroned when I was in my cradle ; my father and 
my mother have been incarcerated ; I was brought up in 
prison ; I have sometimes permission to travel attended 
by my keepers, and I have come to pass the Carnival at 
Venice." The third said, " I am Charles Edward, King 
of England ; my father has surrendered his rights to me \ 
I have fought to sustain them ; my vanquishers have torn 
out the hearts of eight hundred of my partisans ; I have 
been put into prison ; I am going to Rome to pay a visit 
to my father, dethroned like my grandfather and myself, 
and I have come to pass the Carnival at Venice." The 
fourth then spoke, and said, " I am King of Poland ; the 
fortune of war has deprived me of my hereditary states ; 
my father experienced the same reverses ; I resign myself 
to the will of Providence, like the Sultan Achmet, the 
Emperor Ivan, and the King Charles Edward, to whom 
God grant a long life ; and I have come to pass the Car- 
nival at Venice." The fifth said, " I am also King of 
Poland ; I have lost my kingdom twice, but Providence 
has given me another in which I have done more good 
than all the kings of Sarmatia put together have ever 
done on the banks of the Vistula. I also resign myself 
to the will of Providence, and I have come to pass the 
Carnival at Venice." There remained a sixth monarch to 
speak. " Gentlemen," he said, " I am not as great a 
sovereign as the rest, but I, too, have been a king. I am 
Theodore, who was elected King of Corsica ; I was called 
'your majesty,' and at present am hardly called 'sir j ' I 



conduct. 335 

have caused money to be coined, and do not now pos- 
sess a penny ; I have had two secretaries of state, and 
have now scarcely a servant ; I have sat upon a throne, 
and was long in a prison in London, upon straw, and am 
afraid of being treated in the same manner here, although 
I have come, like your majesties, to pass the Carnival at 
Venice." The other five kings heard this confession with 
a noble compassion. Each of them gave King Theodore 
twenty sequins to buy some clothes and shirts. Can- 
dide presented him with a diamond worth two thousand 
sequins. " Who," said the five kings, " is this man who 
can afford to give a hundred times as much as any of us ? 
Are you, sir, also a king ? " " No, your majesties, and I 
have no desire to be." 

Bacon's contemporary and cousin, Sir Robert Cecil, 
who was principal secretary of state to Queen Elizabeth 
and James I., and ultimately lord high treasurer, when he 
was acknowledged to be the ablest, as he appeared the 
most enviable, statesman of his time, wrote to a friend, 
" Give heed to one that hath sorrowed in the bright lustre 
of a court and gone heavily over the best seeming fair 
ground. It is a great task to prove one's honesty, and 

yet not spoil one's fortune I am pushed from the 

shore of comfort, and know not where the winds and 
waves of a court will bear me ; I know it bringeth little 
comfort on earth ; and he is, I reckon, no wise man that 
looketh this way to heaven." Bacon himself says, in one 
of his Essays, " Certainly great persons have need to bor- 
row other men's opinions to think themselves happy ; for 
if they judge by their own feeling they cannot find it ; but 
if they think with themselves what others think of them, 
and that other men would fain be as they are, then they 
are happy as it were by report, when, perhaps, they find 
the contrary within ; for they are the first that find their 
own griefs, though they be the last that find their own 
faults." 



336 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Madame de Stael, surrounded by the most brilliant 
men of genius, beloved by a host of faithful and devoted 
friends, the centre of a circle of unsurpassed attractions, 
was yet doomed to mourn "the solitude of life." A 
short time before her death, she said to Chateaubriand, 
"I am now what I have always been — lively and sad." 

The illustrious Madame Recamier, " after forty years of 
unchallenged queenship in French society, constantly en- 
veloped in an intoxicating incense of admiration and love 
won not less by her goodness and purity than by her 
beauty and grace," writes thus from Dieppe to her niece : 
" I am here in the centre of fetes, princesses, illumina- 
tions, spectacles. Two of my windows face the ball-room, 
the other two front the theatre. Amidst this clatter I am 
in a perfect solitude. I sit and muse on the shore of the 
ocean. I go over all the sad and joyous circumstances 
of my life. I hope you will be more happy than I have 
been." 

Madame de Pompadour, recalling her follies, serious 
matters they were to her, said to the Prince de Soubise, 
u It is like reading a strange book ; my life is an improb- 
able romance ; I do not believe it." " Gray hairs had 
come on like daylight streaming in, — daylight and a head- 
ache with it. Pleasure had gone to bed with the rouge on 
her cheeks." 

" Ah ! " wrote also Madame de Maintenon to her niece, 
" alas that I cannot give you my experience ; that I could 
only show you the weariness of soul by which the great 
are devoured — the difficulty which they find in getting 
through their days ! Do you not see how they die of sad- 
ness in the midst of that fortune which has been a burden 
to them ? I have been young and beautiful ; I have tasted 
many pleasures ; I have been universally beloved. At a 
more advanced age, I have passed years in the intercourse 
of talent and wit, and I solemnly protest to you that all 
conditions leave a frightful void." 



conduct. 337 

Coleridge sums up all more wisely. " I have known," 
he says, "what the enjoyments and advantages of this 
life are, and what the more refined pleasures which learn- 
ing and intellectual power can bestow ; and with all the 
experience that more than threescore years can give, I 
now, on the eve of my departure, declare to you that 
health is a great blessing, — competence obtained by hon- 
orable industry a great blessing, — and a great blessing 
it is to have kind, faithful, and loving friends and rela- 
tives ; but that the greatest of all blessings, as it is the 
most ennobling of all privileges, is to be indeed a Chris- 
tian." 

" We are born and we live so unhappily that the accom- 
plishment of a desire appears to us a falsehood, the reali- 
zation of hope a deception, as if our sad experience had 
taught us the bitter lesson that in the world nothing is 
true but sorrow." "Who ordered toil," says Thackeray, 
11 as the condition of life, ordered weariness, ordered sick- 
ness, ordered poverty, failure, success, — to this man a 
foremost place, to the other a nameless struggle with the 
crowd ; to that a shameful fall, or paralyzed limb, or sud- 
den accident; to each some work upon the ground he 
stands on, until he is laid beneath it." " Nature," says 
Pliny, " makes us buy her presents at the price of so many 
sufferings, that it is dubious whether she deserves most 
the name of a parent or a step-mother." " Solomon and 
Job judged the best and spake the truest," thought Pas- 
cal, " of human misery ; the former the most happy, the 
latter the most unfortunate of mankind ; the one ac- 
quainted by long experience with the vanity of pleasure, 
the other with the reality of affliction and pain." 

"We must patiently suffer," says Montaigne, "the laws 
of our condition ; we are born to grow old, to grow weak, 
and to be sick, in spite of all physic. 'T is the first lesson 
the Mexicans teach their children ; so soon as ever they 
are born, they thus salute them : ' Child, thou art come 



338 LIBRARY NOTES. 

into the world to endure, suffer, and say nothing.' " " Half 
the miseries of human life," thought Hazlitt, "proceed 
from our not perceiving the incompatibility of different 
attainments, and consequently aiming at too much. We 
make ourselves wretched in vainly aspiring after advan- 
tages we are deprived of ; and do not consider that if we 
had these advantages it would be quite impossible for us 
to retain those which we actually do possess, and which, 
after all, if it were put to the question, we would not con- 
sent to part with for the sake of any others." " Men of 
true wisdom and goodness," says Fielding, " are contented 
to take persons and things as they are, without complain- 
ing of their imperfections, or attempting to amend them ; 
they can see a fault in a friend, or relation, or an acquaint- 
ance, without ever mentioning it to the parties themselves 
or to any others ; and this often without lessening their 
affection : indeed, unless great discernment be tempered 
with this overlooking disposition, we ought never to con- 
tract friendships but with a degree of folly which we can 
deceive ; for I hope my friends will pardon me when I 
declare, I know none of them without a fault; and I 
should be sorry if I could imagine I had any friends who 
could not see mine. Forgiveness of this kind we give 
and demand in turn : it is an exercise of friendship, and 
perhaps none of the least pleasant, and this forgiveness 
we must bestow without desire of amendment. There is, 
perhaps, no surer mark of folly, than an attempt to cor- 
rect the natural infirmities of those we love : the finest 
composition of human nature, as well as the finest china, 
may have a flaw in it ; and this, I am afraid, in either case, 
is equally incurable, though nevertheless the pattern may 
remain of the highest value." " In short," says Bulwer, 
" I suspect that every really skilled man of the world — 
as the world exists for its citizens in this nineteenth cent- 
ury — who, at the ripe age of forty, looks from the win- 
dow of his club on the every-day mortals whom Fourier 



CONDUCT. 



339 



has hitherto failed to reform, has convinced him that, 
considering all the mistakes in our education and rearing, 
— all the temptations to which flesh and blood are ex- 
posed — all the trials which, poverty inflicts on the poor — 
all the seductions which wealth whispers to the rich, — 
men, on the whole, are rather good than otherwise, and 
women, on the whole, are rather better than the men." 

"Let a man examine his own thoughts," says Pascal, 
" and he will always find them employed about the time 
past or to come. We scarce bestow a glance upon the 
present ; or, if we do, 't is only to borrow light from hence 
to manage and direct the future. The present is never 
the mark of our designs. We use both past and present 
as our means and instruments, but the future only as our 
object and aim. Thus we never live, but we ever hope 
to live ; and under this continual disposition and prepa- 
ration to happiness, 't is certain we can never be actually 
happy, if our hopes are terminated with the scene of this 
life." 

The Thracians, according to Pliny, estimated their 
lives mathematically, making careful study and count of 
each day before any event of it was forgotten. " Every 
day they put into an urn either a black or a white pebble, 
to denote the good or bad fortune of that day ; at last 
they separated these pebbles, and upon comparing the 
two numbers together, they formed their judgment of the 
whole of their lives." But time, past or present, — time, 
what is it ? " Who can readily and briefly explain this ? " 
inquired St. Augustine. " Who can even in thought com- 
prehend it, so as to utter a word about it ? But what in 
discourse do we mention more familiarly and knowingly, 
than time ? And we understand, when we speak of it ; 
we understand, also, when we hear it spoken of by an- 
other. What then is time ? If no one asks me, I know ; 
if I explain it to one that asketh, I know not ; yet I say 
boldly, that I know that if nothing passed away, time 



340 LIBRARY NOTES. 

passed were not ; and if nothing were coming, a time to 
come were not; and if nothing were, time present were 
not. Those two times then, past and to come, how are 
they, seeing the past now is not, and that to come is not 
yet ? But the present, should it always be present, and 
never pass into time past, verily it should not be time, 
but eternity. If, therefore, time present, in order to be 
time at all, comes into existence only because it passes 
into time past, how can we say that that is in existence, 
whose cause of being is that it shall not be ? How is it 
that we cannot truly say that time is, but because it is 
tending not to be? " Comprehend this, and you see how 
easy a thing it was for the Thracians to " form a judg- 
ment of the whole of their lives" — to strike a nice bal- 
ance between their happiness and their misery. 

But happiness is as illusive as time, and is proved as 
perspicuously to be but a thing of memory, by the same 
venerable saint. " Where, then, and when," he says in 
his famous Confessions, " did I experience my happy 
life, that I should remember and love and long for it ? 
Nor is it I alone, or some few besides, but we all would 
fain be happy ; which, unless by some certain knowledge 
we knew, we should not with so certain a will desire. 
But how is this, that if two men be asked whether they 
would go to the wars, one, perchance, would answer that 
he would, the other that he would not ; but if they were 
asked whether they would be happy, both would instantly, 
without any doubting, say they would ; and for no other 
reason would the one go to the wars, and the other not, 
but to be happy. Is it, perchance, that as one looks for 
his joy in this thing, another in that, all agree in their 
desire of being happy, as they would agree, if they were 
asked, that they wished to have joy, and this joy they 
call a happy life ? Although, then, one obtains the joy 
by one means, another by another, all have one end, 
which they strive to attain, namely, joy. Which being a 



CONDUCT. 341 

thing which all must say they have experienced, it is, 
therefore, found in the memory, and recognized whenever 
the name of a happy life is mentioned." Now do you 
know, perhaps, what happiness is. 

Coming down from Augustine to Helps, — " The won- 
der is that we live on from day to day learning so little 
the art of life. We are constantly victims of every sort 
of worry and petty misery, which it would seem a little 
bit of reflection and sensible conduct would remove. We 
constantly hang together when association only produces 

unhappiness. We know it, but do not remedy it 

We have no right to expect to meet many sympathetic 
people in the course of our lives. [ " To get human be- 
ings together who ought to be together," said Sydney 
Smith, " is a dream." " If," said De Tocqueville, " to 
console you for having been born, you must meet with 
men whose most secret motives are always actuated by 
fine and elevated feelings, you need not wait, you may 
go and drown yourself immediately. But if you would 
be satisfied with a few men, whose actions are in general 
governed by those motives, and a large majority, who 
from time to time are influenced by them, you need not 
make such faces at the human race. Man with his vices, 
his weaknesses, and his virtues, strange combination 
though he be of good and evil, of grandeur and of base- 
ness, is still, on the whole, the object most worthy of 
study, interest, pity, attachment, and admiration in the 
world ; and since we have no angels, we cannot attach 
ourselves, or devote ourselves to anything greater or 
nobler than our fellow-creatures It is when es- 
timating better one's fellow-men, one reckons them not 
by number but by worth ; and this makes the world ap- 
pear small. Then, without regard to distance, one seeks 
everywhere for the rare qualities which one has learned 
to appreciate."] The pleasant man to you is the man 
you can rely upon ; who is tolerant, forbearing, and faith- 



342 



LIBRARY NOTES. 



ful Again, the habit of over-criticism is another 

hinderance to pleasantness. We are not fond of living 
always with our judges ; and daily life will not bear the 
unwholesome scrutiny of an over-critical person." The 
petty annoyances and wanton bitternesses of life make us, 
in our impatience, sometimes wish to fly from all compan- 
ionship ; and contributed, no doubt, — he himself could 
not tell how much, — to make the author of the Genius 
of Solitude exclaim, with so much feeling, " Happy is he 
who, free from the iron visages that hurt him as they pass 
in the street, free from the vapid smiles and sneers of 
frivolous people, draws his sufficingness from inexhausti- 
ble sources always at his command when he is alone ! 
Blest is he who, when disappointed, can turn from the 
affectations of an empty world and find solace in the gen- 
erous sincerity of a full heart. To roam apart by the 
tinkling rill, to crouch in the grass where the crocus grows, 
to lie amid the clover where the honey-bee hums, gaze off 
into the still deeps of summer blue, and feel that your 
harmless life is gliding over the field of time as noiselessly 
as the shadow of a cloud ; or, snuggled in furs, to trudge 
through the drifts amidst the unspotted scenery of winter, 
when Storm unfurls his dark banner in the sky, and Snow 
has camped on the hills and clad every stone and twig 
with his ermine, is pleasure surpassing any to be won in 
shallowly consorting with mobs of men." 

"The longer I live," said Maurice de Guerin, "and the 
clearer I discern between true and false in society, the 
more does the inclination to live, not as a savage or a 
misanthrope, but as a solitary man on the frontiers of 
society, on the outskirts of the world, gain strength and 
grow in me. The birds come and go, and make nests 
around our habitations j they are fellow-citizens of our 
farms and hamlets with us : but they take their flight in 
a heaven which is boundless ; the hand of God alone 
gives and measures to them their daily food ; they build 



CONDUCT. 343 

their nests in the heart of the thick bushes, and hang 
them in the height of the trees. So would I, too, live, 
hovering round society, and having always at my back a 
field of liberty vast as the sky." 

A strange instance of abandonment of the world for 
a solitary life is given in the history of Henry Welby, the 
Hermit of Grub Street, who died in 1638, at the age of 
eighty-four. This example affords " an eccentric illustra- 
tion of one of those phases of human nature out of which 
the anchoretic life has sprung. When forty years old, 
Welby was assailed, in a moment of anger, by a younger 
brother, with a loaded pistol. It flashed in the pan. 
* Thinking of the danger he had escaped, he fell into 
many deep considerations, on the which he grounded an 
irrevocable resolution to live alone.' He had wealth and 
position, and was of a social temper ; but the shock he 
had undergone had made him distrustful and meditative, 
not malignant nor wretched, and engendered in him a 
purpose of surpassing tenacity. He had three chambers, 
one within another, prepared for his solitude ; the first 
for his diet, the second for his lodging, the third for his 
study. While his food was set on the table by one of his 
servants, he retired into his sleeping-room ; and, while 
his bed was making, into his study \ and so on, until all 
was clear. ' There he set up his rest, and, in forty-four 
years, never upon any occasion issued out of those cham- 
bers till he was borne thence upon men's shoulders. 
Neither, in all that time, did any human being — save, on 
some rare necessity, his ancient maid-servant — look upon 
his face.' Supplied with the best new books in various 
languages, he devoted himself unto prayers and reading. 
He inquired out objects of charity and sent them relief. 
He would spy from his chamber, by a private prospect 
into the street, any sick, lame, or weak passing by, and 
send comforts and money to them. ' His hair, by reason 
no barber came near him for the space of so many years, 



344 LIBRARY NOTES. 

was so much overgrown at the time of his death, that he 
appeared rather like an eremite of the wilderness than an 
inhabitant of a city.' " 

Welby must have possessed the jewel which this inci- 
dent, related by Izaak Walton in his Angler, discovers to 
be so indispensable. " I knew a man," he says, " that 
had health and riches and several houses, all beautiful 
and ready furnished, and would often trouble himself and 
family to be removing from one house to another ; and, 
being asked by a friend why he removed so often from 
one house to another, replied, ' It was to find content in 
some one of them.' ' Content,' said his friend, ' ever 
dwells in a meek and quiet soul.' " 

" It 's no in titles nor in rank ; 
It 's no in wealth like Lon'on bank, 

To purchase peace and rest ; 
It 's no in making muckle mair : 
It 's no in books ; it 's no in lear, 

To make us truly blest : 
If happiness hae not her seat 

And centre in the breast, 
We may be wise, or rich, or great, 

But never can be blest : 
Nae treasures, nor pleasures, 

Could make us happy lang ; 
The heart aye's the part aye, 

That makes us right or wrang." 

Out of mud, say the Orientalists, springs the lotus 
flower ; out of clay comes gold and many precious things ; 
out of oysters the pearls ; brightest silks, to robe fairest 
forms, are spun by a worm ; bezoar from the bull, musk 
from the deer, are produced ; from a stick is born flame ; 
from the jungle comes sweetest honey. As from sources 
of little worth come the precious things of earth, even so 
is it with hearts that hold their fortune within. They need 
not lofty birth or noble kin. Their victory is recorded. A 
rain-drop, they say, fell into the sea. " I am lost ! " it 



CONDUCT. 345 

cried ; "what am I in such a sea? " Into the shell of a 
gaping oyster it fell, and there was formed into the orient 
pearl which now shines fairest in Britain's diadem. Hu- 
mility creates the worth it underrates. " By two things," 
says the author of the Imitation, " a man is lifted up from 
things earthly, namely, by simplicity and purity. A pure 
heart penetrateth heaven and hell. Such as every one is 
inwardly, so he judgeth outwardly. If there be joy in the 

world, surely a man of a pure heart possesseth it 

Let not thy peace depend on the tongues of men; for 
whether they judge well of thee or ill, thou art not on 
that account other than thyself. He that careth not to 
please men, nor feareth to displease them, shall enjoy 

much peace He enjoyeth great tranquillity of heart, 

that careth neither for the praise nor dispraise of men. If 
thou consider what thou art in thyself, thou wilt not care 
what men say of thee. Man looketh on the countenance, 
but God on the heart. Man considereth the deeds, but 
God weigheth the intentions." " Will you not be very 
glad to know," wrote Eugenie de Guerin to her brother, 
in Paris, "that I have just been spending a pleasant 
quarter of an hour on the terrace-steps, seated by the side 
of an old woman, who was singing me a lamentable ballad 
on an event that occurred long ago at Cahuzac ? This 
came about apropos of a gold cross that has been stolen 
from the neck of the blessed Virgin. The old woman 
remembered her grandmother telling her that she had 
heard in olden times of this same church being the scene 
of a still more sacrilegious robbery, since it was then the 
blessed sacrament that was carried off one day when it 
was left exposed in the empty church. A young girl 
came to the altar while everybody was busy in the har- 
vest, and, mounting upon it, put the pyx into her apron, 
and went and placed it under a rose-tree in a wood. The 
shepherds who discovered it told where it was, and nine 
priests came in procession to adore the blessed sacrament 



346 LIBRARY NOTES. 

under the rose-tree, and to carry it back to the church. 
But for all that, the poor shepherdess was arrested, tried, 
and condemned to be burned. Just when about to die, 
she requested to confess, and owned the fact to a priest ; 
but it was not, she said, because of any thievish propensi- 
ties she took it, but that she wanted to have the blessed 
sacrament in the forest. ' I thought that the good God 
would be as satisfied under a rose-tree as on an altar.' At 
these words an angel descended from heaven to announce 
her pardon, and to comfort the pious criminal, who was 
burnt on a stake, of which the rose-tree formed the first 
fagot." There is a tradition that one night, Gabriel, from 
his seat in paradise, heard the voice of God sweetly re- 
sponding to a human heart. The angel said, " Surely 
this must be an eminent servant of the Most High, whose 
spirit is dead to lust and lives on high." The angel has- 
tened over land and sea to find this man, but could not 
find him in the earth or heavens. At last he exclaimed, 
" O Lord, show me the way to the object of thy love ! " 
God answered, "Turn thy steps to yon village, and in 
that pagoda thou shalt behold him." The angel sped to 
the pagoda, and therein found a solitary man kneeling 
before an idol. Returning, he cried, " O master of the 
world ! hast thou looked with love on a man who invokes 
an idol in a pagoda ? " God said, " I consider not the 
error of ignorance : this heart, amid its darkness, hath the 
highest place." 

Anaxagoras, whose disciples were Socrates and Peri- 
cles and Euripides, in reply to a question, said he believed 
those to be most happy who seem least to be so ; and that 
we must not look among the rich and great for persons 
who taste true happiness, but among those who till a small 
piece of ground, or apply themselves to the sciences, 
without ambition. "The fairest lives, in my opinion," 
said Montaigne, " are those which regularly accommodate 
themselves to the common and human model, without mir- 



CONDUCT. 347 

acle, without extravagance." " If some great men," said 
Mandeville, " had not a superlative pride, and everybody 
understood the enjoyment of life, who would be a lord 
chancellor, a prime minister, or a grand pensionary ? " 
There is in existence a precious old album containing the 
handwriting of many renowned men, such as Luther, 
Erasmus, Mosheim, and others. The last-mentioned has 
written, in Latin, the following remarkable words : " Re- 
nown is a source of toil and sorrow \ obscurity is a source 
of happiness." " Does he not drink more sweetly that 
takes his beverage in an earthen vessel," asks Jeremy 
Taylor, "than he that looks and searches into his golden 
chalices, for fear of poison, and looks pale at every sud- 
den noise, and sleeps in armor, and trusts nobody, and 
does not trust God for safety ? " 

" The world," said Goethe, " could not exist, if it were 
not so simple. This ground has been tilled a thousand 
years, yet its powers remain ever the same ; a little rain, 
a little sun, and each spring it grows green again." 

" Everything has its own limits," says Hazlitt, " a little 
centre of its own, round which it moves ; so that our true 
wisdom lies in our keeping in our own walk in life, how- 
ever humble or obscure, and being satisfied if we can suc- 
ceed in it. The best of us can do no more, and we shall 
only become ridiculous or unhappy by attempting it. We 
are ashamed because we are at a loss in things to which 
we have no pretensions, and try to remedy our mistakes 
by committing greater. An overweening vanity or self- 
opinion is, in truth, often at the bottom of this weakness ; 
and we shall be most likely to conquer the one by eradi- 
cating the other, or restricting it within due and moderate 
bounds." 

In the Imaginary Conversations, Aspasia asks Pericles : 
" Is there any station so happy as an uncontested place 
in a small community, where manners are simple, where 
wants are few, where respect is the tribute of probity, and 
love is the guerdon of beneficence ? " 



348 LIBRARY NOTES. 

" From my tutor," said the good emperor Marcus Au- 
relius, " I learnt endurance of labor, and to want little, 
and to work with my own hands, and not to meddle with 
other people's affairs, and not to be ready to listen to 
slander." 

" Ah ! " exclaimed the Attic Philosopher, " if men but 
knew in what a small dwelling joy can live, and how little 
it costs to furnish it ! . . . . Does a man drink more when 
he drinks from a large glass ? From whence comes that 
universal dread of mediocrity, the fruitful mother of peace 
and liberty ? Ah ! there is the evil which, above every 
other, it should be the aim of both public and private 
education to anticipate ! If that were got rid of, what 
treasons would be spared, what baseness avoided, what a 
chain of excess and crime would be forever broken ! We 
award the palm to charity, and to self-sacrifice : but, 
above all, let us award it to moderation, for it is the great 
social virtue. Even when it does not create the others, 
it stands instead of them." Socrates used to say that the 
man who ate with the greatest appetite had the least need 
of delicacies ; and that he who drank with the greatest 
appetite was the least inclined to look for a draught which 
is not at hand ; and that those who want fewest things are 
nearest to the gods. Milton says that the lyric poet may 
drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who 
shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must 
drink water out of a golden bowl. " Have you never 
noticed," said Hiero, " all the multitudinous contrivances 
which are set before tyrants, acid, and harsh, and sour; 
and whatsoever else there can be of the same kind ? " 
" To be sure I have," said Simonides ; " and all these 
things appeared to me to be very contrary to the natural 
taste of any man." " And do you think," said Hiero, 
" that these dishes are anything else but the fancies of a 
diseased and vitiated taste ; since those who eat with 
appetite, you well know, have no need of these contriv- 



conduct. 349 

ances and provocatives ? " Michel Angelo seldom par- 
took of the enjoyments of the table, and used to say, 
" However rich I may have been, I have always lived as 
a poor man." Said Seneca, " He that lives according to 
nature cannot be poor, and he that exceeds can never 
have enough." Epicurus said, " I feed sweetly upon 
bread and water, those sweet and easy provisions of the 
body, and I defy the pleasures of costly provisions." 
Cardinal Mancini staying once on a visit to Poussin till 
it was dark, the artist took the candle in his hand, lighted 
him down-stairs, and waited upon him to his coach. The 
prelate was sorry to see him do it himself, and could not 
help saying, " I very much pity you, Poussin, that you 
have not one servant." " And I pity you more, my lord," 
replied Poussin, " that you have so many." " No man 
needs to flatter," said Jeremy Taylor, "if he can live as 
nature did intend. He need not swell his accounts, and 
intricate his spirit with arts of subtlety and contrivance ; 
he can be free from fears, and the chances of the world 
cannot concern him. All our trouble is from within us ; 
and if a dish of lettuce and a clear fountain can cool all 
my heats, so that I shall have neither thirst nor pride, 
lust nor revenge, envy nor ambition, I am lodged in the 
bosom of felicity." 

"Prosperity," says Froude, in one of his essays, "is 
consistent with intense worldliness, intense selfishness, in- 
tense hardness of heart; while the grander features of 
human character, — self-sacrifice, disregard of pleasure, 
patriotism, love of knowledge, devotion to any great and 
good cause, — these have no tendency to bring men what 
is called fortune. They do not even necessarily promote 
their happiness ; for do what they will in this way, the 
horizon of what they desire to do perpetually flies before 
them. High hopes and enthusiasms are generally disap- 
pointed in results ; and the wrongs, the cruelties, the 
wretchedness of all kinds which forever prevail among 



350 LIBRARY NOTES. 

mankind, — the short-comings in himself of which he be- 
comes more conscious as he becomes really better, — 
these things, you may be sure, will prevent a noble-minded 
man from ever being particularly happy." " I should 
rather say," he says in another essay, " that the Scots 
had been an unusually happy people. Intelligent indus- 
try, the honest doing of daily work, with a sense that it 
must be done well, under penalties ; the necessaries of 
life moderately provided for ; and a sensible content with 
the situation of life in which men are born — this through 
the week, and at the end of it the Cotter's Saturday Night 
— the homely family, gathered reverently and peacefully 
together, and irradiated with a sacred presence. Happi- 
ness ! such happiness as we human creatures are likely 
to know upon this world will be found there, if anywhere." 

" On the Simplon," says a German traveler, " amid the 
desert of snow and mist, in the vicinity of a refuge, a boy 
and his little sister were journeying up the mountain by 
the side of our carriage. Both had on their backs little 
baskets filled with wood, which they had gathered in the 
lower mountains, where there is still some vegetation. 
The boy gave us some specimens of rock crystal and 
other stone, for which we gave him some small coins. 
The delight with which he cast stolen glances at his 
money, as he passed by our carriage, made upon me an 
indelible impression. Never before had I seen such a 
heavenly expression of felicity. I could not but reflect 
that God had placed all sources and capabilities for 
happiness in the human heart ; and that, with respect to 
happiness, it is perfectly indifferent how and where one 
dwells." 

"A man," says Cumberland, "who is gifted with worldly 
qualities and accommodations is armed with hands, as a 
ship with grappling-irons, ready to catch hold of, and make 
himself fast to everything he comes in contact with, and 
such a man, with all these properties of adhesion, has also 



CONDUCT. 35I 

the property, like the polypus, of a most miraculous and 
convenient indivisibility; cut off his hold — nay, cut him 
how you will, he is still a polypus, whole and entire. Men 
of this sort still work their way out of their obscurity like 
cockroaches out of the hold of a ship, and crawl into no- 
tice, nay, even into kings' palaces, as the frogs did into 
Pharaoh's ; the happy faculty of noting times and seasons, 
and a lucky promptitude to avail themselves of moments 
with address and boldness, are alone such all-sufficient 
requisites, such marketable stores of worldly knowledge, 
that, although the minds of those who own them shall be, 
as to all the liberal sciences, a rasa tabula, yet knowing 
these things needful to be known, let their difficulties and 
distresses be what they may, though the storm of adver- 
sity threatens to overwhelm them, they are in a life-boat, 
buoyed up by corks, and cannot sink. These are the stray 
children turned loose upon the world, whom Fortune, in 
her charity, takes charge of, and for whose guidance in 
the by-ways and cross-roads of their pilgrimage she sets 
up fairy finger-posts, discoverable by those whose eyes 
are near the ground, but unperceived by such whose looks 
are raised above it." 

" Genial manners are good," says Emerson, " and power 
of accommodation to any circumstance; but the high prize 
of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be born with 
a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment 
and happiness, — whether it be to make baskets, or broad- 
swords, or canals, or statues, or songs." 

Wordsworth's man-servant, James, was brought up in a 
work-house, and at nine years of age was turned out of 
the house with two shillings in his pocket. When without 
a sixpence, he was picked up by a farmer, who took him 
into his service on condition that all his clothes should be 
burnt (they were so filthy) ; and he was to pay for his new 
clothes out of his wages of two pounds ten shillings per 
annum. Here he stayed as long as he was wanted. " I 



352 LIBRARY NOTES. 

have been so lucky," said James, " that I was never out 
of a place a day in my life, for I was always taken into 
service immediately. I never got into a scrape, or was 
drunk in my life, for I never taste any liquor. So that I 
have often said, I consider myself as a favorite of fort- 
une ! " This is like Goldsmith's cripple in the park, who, 
remarking upon his appealing wretchedness, said, " 'T is 
not every man that can be born with a golden spoon in 
his mouth." 

"Arrogance," said Goethe, "is natural to youth. A 
man believes, in his youth, that the world properly began 
with him, and that all exists for his sake. In the East, 
there was a man who, every morning, collected his people 
about him, and never would go to work till he had com- 
manded the sun to arise. But he was wise enough not to 
speak his command till the sun of its own accord was 
ready to appear." " At the outset of life," says Hazlitt, 
" our imagination has a body to it. We are in a state be- 
tween sleeping and waking, and have indistinct but glo- 
rious glimpses of strange shapes, and there is always 
something to come better than what we see. As in our 
dreams the fullness of the blood gives warmth and reality 
to the coinage of the brain, so in youth our ideas are 
clothed, and fed, and pampered with our good spirits ; we 
breathe thick with thoughtless happiness, the weight of 
future years presses on the strong pulses of the heart, 
and we repose with undisturbed faith in truth and good. 
As we advance, we exhaust our fund of enjoyment and 
of hope. We are no longer wrapped in lamb's-wool, lulled 
in Elysium. As we taste the pleasures of life, their spirit 
evaporates, the sense palls, and nothing is left but the 
phantoms, the lifeless shadows of what has been ! " 

" There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
The earth, and every common sight, 
To me did seem 
Apparel'd in celestial light, 
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 



conduct. 353 

It is not now as it has been of yore ; 
Turn wheresoe'er I may, 
By night or day, 
The things which I have seen I now can see no more. 

" The rainbow comes and goes, 
And lovely is the rose ; 
The moon doth with delight 
Look round her when the heavens are bare ; 
Waters on a starry night 
Are beautiful and fair ; 
The sunshine is a glorious birth ; 
But yet I know, where'er I go, 
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth." 

"Why," asks Souvestre, "is there so much confidence 
at first, so much doubt at last ? Has, then, the knowledge 
of life no other end but to make it unfit for happiness ? 
Must we condemn ourselves to ignorance if we would 
preserve hope ? Is the world, and is the individual man, 
intended, after all, to find rest only in an eternal child- 
hood ? " 

"If the world does improve on the whole," said Goethe, 
"yet youth must always begin anew, and go through the 
stages of culture from the beginning." But, " 't is a great 
advantage of rank," said Pascal, "that a man at eighteen 
or twenty shall be allowed the same esteem and deference 
which another purchaseth by his merit at fifty. Here are 
thirty years gained at a stroke." 

" The whole employment of men's lives," said the 
same thinker, " is to improve their fortunes ; and yet the 
title by which they hold all, if traced to its origin, is no 
more than the pure fancy of the legislators : but their 
possession is still more precarious than their right, and at 
the mercy of a thousand accidents : nor are the treasures 
of the mind better insured ; while a fall, or a fit of sick- 
ness, may bankrupt the ablest understanding Caesar 

was too old, in my opinion, to amuse himself with project- 
ing the conquest of the world. Such an imagination was 
16 



354 LIBRARY NOTES. 

excusable in Alexander, a prince full of youth and fire, 
and not easy to be checked in his hopes. But Caesar 
ought to have been more grave." 

" Knowledge has two extremities, which meet and touch 
each other," says Pascal, again. "The first of them is 
pure, natural ignorance, such as attends every man at his 
birth. The other is the perfection attained by great souls, 
who, having run through the circle of all that mankind 
can know, find at length that they know nothing, and 
are contented to return to that ignorance from which they 
set out. Ignorance that thus knows itself is a wise and 
learned ignorance." 

"That is ever the difference," said Emerson, "between 
the wise and the unwise : the latter wonders at what is 
unusual, the wise man wonders at the usual." 

It has been said that the visitor, climbing the white 
roof of the Milan cathedral, and gazing on the forest of 
statues, " feels as though a flight of angels had alighted 
there and been struck to marble." "At the top of his 
mind," says Alger, " the devout scholar has a holy of 
holies, a little pantheon set round with altars and the im- 
ages of the greatest men. Every day, putting on a priestly 
robe, he retires into this temple and passes before its 
shrines and shapes. Here he feels a thrill of awe ; there 
he lays a burning aspiration ; farther on he swings a cen- 
ser of reverence. To one he lifts a look of love ; at the 
feet of another he drops a grateful tear ; and before an- 
other still, a flush of pride and joy suffuses him. They 
smile on him : sometimes they speak and wave their sol- 
emn hands. Always they look up to the Highest. Puri- 
fied and hallowed, he gathers his soul together, and comes 
away from the worshipful intercourse, serious, serene, glad, 
and strong." 

" Men," says St. Augustine, " travel far to climb high 
mountains, to observe the majesty of the ocean, to trace 
the sources of rivers, but they neglect themselves." " Ad- 



CONDUCT. 355 

mirable reasoning ! admirable lesson ! " exclaimed Pe- 
trarch, as he closed the Confessions upon the passage 
when on the summit of the Alps. " If," said he, " I have 
undergone so much labor in climbing this mountain that 
my body might be nearer to heaven, what ought I not to 
do in order that my soul may be received into those im- 
mortal regions ? " 

Hear this lofty strain of the old heathen emperor, Mar- 
cus Aurelius : " Short is the little which remains to thee 
of life. Live as on a mountain. Let men see, let them 
know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live. If 
they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is 
better than to live as men do." 

" As soon as a man," says Max Miiller, " becomes con- 
scious of himself as distinct from all other things and per- 
sons, he at the same moment becomes conscious of a 
Higher Self, a higher power, without which he feels that 
neither he nor anything else would have any life or re- 
ality." 

" To live, indeed," says Sir Thomas Browne, " is to be 
again ourselves, which being not only a hope but an evi- 
dence in noble believers, 't is all one to lie in St. Inno- 
cent's church-yard, as in the sands of Egypt ; ready to 
be anything in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content 
with six feet as the moles of Adrianus." 

" At the age of seventy-five," said Goethe, " one must, 
of course, think frequently of death. But this thought 
never gives me the least uneasiness, I am so fully con- 
vinced that the soul is indestructible, and that its activity 
will continue through eternity. It is like the sun, which 
seems to our earthly eyes to set in night, but is in reality 
gone to diffuse its light elsewhere." 

" The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, 

Lets in new light thro' chinks that time has made ; 

Stronger by weakness, wiser men become 

As they draw near to their eternal home. 

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view 

That stand upon the threshold of the new." 



356 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Amongst the poems of Mrs. Barbauld is a stanza on 
Life, written in extreme old age. Madame D'Arblay told 
the poet Rogers that she repeated it every night. Words- 
worth once said to a visitor, " Repeat me that stanza by 
Mrs. Barbauld." His friend did so. Wordsworth made 
him repeat it again. And so he learned it by heart. He 
was at the time walking in his sitting-room at Rydal, with 
his hands behind him, and was heard to mutter to him- 
self, " I am not in the habit of grudging people their good 
things, but I wish I had written those lines." 

" Life ! we 've been long together, 
Thro' pleasant and thro' cloudy weather : 
'T is hard to part when friends are dear, 
Perhaps 't will cost a sigh, a tear : 
Then steal away, give little warning, 

Choose thine own time ; 
Say not good-night, but in some brighter clime 
Bid me good-morning." 



XIII. 

RELIGION. 

"Ah!" sighed Shelley to Leigh Hunt, as the organ 
was playing in the cathedral at Pisa, " what a divine re- 
ligion might be found out if charity were really made the 
principle of it instead of faith." 

" In the seventeenth century," said Dean Stanley, in 
one of his Lectures on the Church of Scotland, " the 
minister of the parish of Anworth was the famous Sam- 
uel Rutherford, the great religious oracle of the Cove- 
nanters and their adherents. It was, as all readers of his 
letters will remember, the spot which he most loved on 
earth. The very swallows and sparrows which found 
their nests in the church of Anworth were, when far away, 
the objects of his affectionate envy. Its hills and valleys 
were the witnesses of his ardent devotion when living; 
they still retain his memory with unshaken fidelity. It is 
one of the traditions thus cherished on the spot, that on 
a Saturday evening, at one of those family gatherings 
whence, in the language of the good Scottish poet, — 

' Old Scotia's grandeur springs,' 
when Rutherford was catechising his children and serv- 
ants, that a stranger knocked at the door of the manse, 
and begged shelter for the night. The minister kindly 
received him, and asked him to take his place amongst 
the family and assist at their religious exercises. It so 
happened that the question in the catechism which came 
to the stranger's turn was that which asks, ' How many 
commandments are there ? ' He answered, ' Eleven.' 
1 Eleven ! ' exclaimed Rutherford ; ' I am surprised that a 



358 LIBRARY NOTES. 

man of your age and appearance should not know better. 
What do you mean ? ' And he answered, ' A new com- 
mandment I give unto you, that ye love one another ; as 
I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this 
shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have 
love one to another.' Rutherford was much impressed 
by the answer, and they retired to rest. The next morn- 
ing he rose early to meditate on the services of the day. 
The old manse of Anworth stood — its place is still 
pointed out — in the corner of a field, under the hill- 
side, and thence a long, winding, wooded path, still called 
Rutherford's Walk, leads to the church. Through this 
glen he passed, and, as he threaded his way through the 
thicket, he heard amongst the trees the voice of the 
stranger at his morning devotions. The elevation of the 
sentiments and of the expressions convinced him that it 
was no common man. He accosted him, and the traveler 
confessed to him that he was no other than the great di- 
vine and scholar, Archbishop Usher, the Primate of the 
Church of Ireland, one of the best and most learned men 
of his age, who well fulfilled that new commandment in 
the love which he won and which he bore to others ; one 
of the few links of Christian charity between the fierce 
contending factions of that time, devoted to King Charles 
I. in his life-time, and honored in his grave by the Pro- 
tector Cromwell. He it was who, attracted by Ruther- 
ford's fame, had thus come in disguise to see him in the 
privacy of his own home. The stern Covenanter wel- 
comed the stranger prelate ; side by side they pursued 
their way along Rutherford's Walk to the little church, of 
which the ruins still remain ; and in that small Presby- 
terian sanctuary, from Rutherford's rustic pulpit, the arch- 
bishop preached to the people of Anworth on the words 
which had so startled his host the evening before : ' A new 
commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another ; 
as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.' " 



RELIGION. 359 

In a legend which St. Jerome has recorded, and which, 
says the same writer, in his Essays on the Apostolic Age, 
is not the less impressive because so familiar to us, we 
see the aged Apostle (John) borne in the arms of his 
disciples into the Ephesian assembly, and there repeat- 
ing over and over again the same saying, " Little chil- 
dren, love one another • " till, when asked why he said 
this and nothing else, he replied in those well-known 
words, fit indeed to be the farewell speech of the beloved 
disciple, " Because this is our Lord's command, and if 
you fulfill this, nothing else is needed." 

"An acceptance of the sentiment of love throughout 
Christendom for a season,"' says Emerson, " would bring 
the felon and the outcast to our side in tears, with the 
devotion of his faculties to our service. Love would put 
a new face on this weary old w r orld, in which we dwell as 
pagans and enemies too long, and it would warm the 
heart to see how fast the vain diplomacy of statesmen, 
the impotence of armies and navies and lines of defense, 
would be superseded by this unarmed child." We do 
not believe, or we forget, that " the Holy Ghost came 
down, not in the shape of a vulture, but in the form of a 
dove." 

Rogers' stories of children, of which he told many, 
were very pretty. The prettiest was of a little girl who 
was a great favorite of every one who knew her. " Why 
does everybody love you so much ? " She answered, " I 
think it is because I love everybody so much." 

11 A strong argument," thought Poe, " for the religion 
of Christ is this — that offenses against charity are about 
the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made 
— not to understand — but to feel — as crime." 

" Tell me, gentle traveler, who hast wandered through 
the world, and seen the sweetest roses blow, and bright- 
est gliding rivers, of all thine eyes have seen, which is 
the fairest land ? " " Child, shall I tell thee where nature 



360 LIBRARY NOTES. 

is most blest and fair ? It is where those we love abide. 
Though that space be small, ample is it above kingdoms ; 
though it be a desert, through it runs the river of para- 
dise, and there are the enchanted bowers." 

" We ought," says the author of Ecce Homo, " to be 
just as tolerant of an imperfect creed as we are of an im- 
perfect practice. Everything which can be urged in ex- 
cuse for the latter may also be pleaded for the former. 
If the way to Christian action is beset by corrupt habits 
and misleading passions, the path to Christian truth is 
overgrown with prejudices, and strewn with fallen theories 
and rotting systems which hide it from our view. It is 
quite as hard to think rightly as to act rightly, or even to 
feel rightly. And as all allow that an error is a less cul- 
pable thing than a crime or a vicious passion, it is mon- 
strous that it should be more severely punished ; it is 
monstrous that Christ, who was called the friend of pub- 
licans and sinners, should be represented as the pitiless 
enemy of bewildered seekers of truth. How could men 
have been guilty of such an inconsistency ? By speaking 
of what they do not understand. Men in general do not 
understand or appreciate the difficulty of finding truth. 
All men must act, and therefore all men learn in some 
degree how difficult it is to act rightly. The consequence 
is that all men can make excuse for those who fail to act 
rightly. But all men are not compelled to make an in- 
dependent search for truth, and those who voluntarily 
undertake to do so are always few. To the world at 
large it seems quite easy to find truth, and inexcusable 
to miss it. And no wonder ! For by finding truth they 
mean only learning by rote the maxims current among 
them." " Maxims and first principles," says Pascal, " are 
subject to revolutions ; and we are to go to chronology 
for the epochs of right and wrong. A very humorsome 
justice this, which is bounded by a river or a mountain : 
orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on 



RELIGION. 361 

the other." "Let there," begs the Spanish President 
Castelar, " be no more accursed races on the earth. Let 
every one act according to his conscience, and communi- 
cate freely with his God. Let thought be only corrected 
by the contradiction of thought. Let error be an infirm- 
ity, and not a crime. Let us agree in acknowledging that 
opinions sometimes take possession of our understand- 
ings quite independent of our will or desire. Let us be 
so just as to be enabled to see even to what degree each 
race has contributed to the universal education of hu- 
manity." 

" Every new idea," says a writer in The Quarterly Re- 
view, " creates an enthusiasm in the minds of those who 
have first grasped it, which renders them incapable of 
viewing it in its true proportions to the sum total of knowl- 
edge. It is in their eyes no new denizen of the world of 
facts, but a heaven-sent ruler of it, to which all previously 
recognized truths must be made to bow. As time goes 
on, truer views obtain. The new principle ceases to be 
regarded either as a pestilent delusion or as a key to all 
mysteries. Its application comes to be better defined 
and its value more reasonably appreciated, when both 
idolators and iconoclasts have passed away, and a new 
generation begins to take stock of its intellectual inherit- 
ance." 

" The truth," said Goethe, " must be repeated over and 
over again, because error is repeatedly preached among 
us, not only by individuals, but by the masses. In peri- 
odicals and cyclopedias, in schools and universities, every- 
where, in fact, error prevails, and is quite easy in the feel- 
ing that it has quite a majority on its side." " Public 
opinion, of which we hear so much," said a writer in 
Blackwood, long ago, " is never anything else than the 
reecho of the thought of a few great men half a century 
before. It takes that time for ideas to flow down from 
the elevated to the inferior level. The great never adopt, 



362 LIBRARY NOTES. 

they only originate. Their chief efforts are always made 
in opposition to the prevailing opinions by which they are 
surrounded. Thence it is that a powerful mind is always 
uneasy when it is not in the minority on any subject which 
excites general attention." " If you discover a truth," 
says an unknown author, " you are persecuted by an in- 
finite number of people who gain their living from the 
error you oppose, saying that this error itself is the truth, 
and that the greatest error is that which tends to destroy 
it." " There arose no small stir" at Ephesus on account 
of Paul's preaching. " For a certain man named Deme- 
trius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, 
brought no small gain unto the craftsmen ; whom he 
called together with the workmen of like occupation, and 
said, Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth : 
moreover, ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but 
almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and 
turned away much people, saying that they be no gods 
which are made with hands. So that not only this our 
craft is in danger to be set at naught ; but also that the 
temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, 
and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia 
and the world worshipeth. And when they heard these 
sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, 
Great is Diana of the Ephesians." 

Thomas Aikenhead, a student of eighteen, was hanged 
at Edinburgh, in 1697, f° r having uttered, says Macaulay, 
in his History, free opinions about the Trinity and some 
of the books of the Bible. His offense was construed as 
blasphemy under an old Scotch statute, which was strained 
for the purpose of convicting him. After his sentence he 
recanted, and begged a short respite to make his peace 
with God. This the privy council declined to grant, un- 
less the Edinburgh clergy would intercede for him ; but 
so far were they from seconding his petition, that they 
actually demanded that his execution should not be de- 



RELIGION. 363 

layed. " Imagine, if you can," says Froude, in one of 
his essays, "a person being now put to death for a specu- 
lative theological opinion. You feel at once that, in the 
most bigoted country in the world, such a thing has be- 
come impossible ; and the impossibility is the measure of 
the alteration which we have all undergone. The formu- 
las remain as they were, on either side, — the very same 
formulas which were once supposed to require these de- 
testable murders. But we have learned to know each 
other better. The cords which bind together the brother- 
hood of mankind are woven of a thousand strands. We 
do not any more fly apart or become enemies because, 
here and there, in one strand out of so many, there are 
still unsound places." 

It was in the Star Chamber (during the reign of Charles 
I., after Christ, sixteen hundred and thirty-seven years) 
that Leighton, a clergyman, for coarse invectives against 
prelacy and prelates, received the sentence by which he 
was severely whipped in public, was put in the pillory, 
had one ear cut off, one side of his nose slit, and one 
cheek branded with the letters S. S., to denote that he 
was a sower of sedition. " On that day week," says 
Laud (then Archbishop of Canterbury), who instigated 
the prosecution, " the sores upon his back, ear, nose, and 
face being not cured, he was whipped again at the pillory, 
and there had the remainder of his sentence executed 
upon him, by cutting off the other ear, slitting the other 
side of his nose, and branding the other cheek." He 
was, in addition, degraded from his ministry, fined ten 
thousand pounds, and ordered to be retained in confine- 
ment for life. ^7 

"There is a violent zeal," says Fenelon, "that we must / 
correct ; it thinks it can change the whole world, it would 
reform everything, it would subject every one to its laws. 
The origin of this zeal is disgraceful. The defects of our 
neighbor interfere with our own ; our vanity is wounded 



364 LIBRARY NOTES. 

by that of another ; our own haughtiness finds our neigh- 
bor's ridiculous and insupportable ; our restlessness is 
rebuked by the sluggishness and indolence of this person ; 
our gloom is disturbed by the gayety and frivolities of 
that person, and our heedlessness by the shrewdness and 
address of another. If we were faultless, we should not 
be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom 
we associate. If we were to acknowledge honestly that 
we have not virtue enough to bear patiently with our 
neighbors' weaknesses, we should show our own imper- 
fection, and this alarms our vanity. We therefore make 
our weakness pass for strength, elevate it to a virtue and 
call it zeal ; an imaginary and often hypocritical zeal. 
For is it not surprising to see how tranquil we are about 
the errors of others when they do not trouble us, and how 
soon this wonderful zeal kindles against those who excite 
our jealousy, or weary our patience ? " "We reprove our 
friends' faults," said Wycherley, " more out of pride than 
love or charity ; not so much to correct them as to make 
them believe we are ourselves without them." Simonides 
satirizes the same infirmity in a fable, to be found in the 
treasures of Athenasus : — 

With his claw the snake surprising, 
Thus the crab kept moralizing : — 
" Out on sidelong turns and graces, 
Straight 's the word for honest paces ! " 

It was Dean Swift who said, " We have just enough of 
religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us 
love, one another." " Your business," said Hunt, " is to 
preach love to your neighbor, to kick him to bits, and to 
thank God for the contradiction." " The falsehood that 
the tongue commits," said Landor, "is slight in compari- 
son with what is conceived by the heart, and executed by 
the whole man, throughout life. If, professing love and 
charity to the human race at large, I quarrel day after 
day with my next neighbor ; if, professing that the rich 

X 



RELIGION. 365 

can never see God, I spend in the luxuries of my house- 
hold a talent monthly; if, professing to place so much 
confidence in his word, that, in regard to worldly weal, 
I need take no care for to-morrow, I accumulate stores 
even beyond what would be necessary though I quite dis- 
trusted both his providence and his veracity ; if, profess- 
ing that ' he who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord,' 
I question the Lord's security, and haggle with him about 
the amount of the loan ; if, professing that I am their 
steward, I keep ninety-nine parts in the hundred as the 
emolument of my stewardship : how, when God hates 
liars, and punishes defrauders, shall I, and other such 
thieves and hypocrites, fare hereafter ? " In one of his 
chapters on the Study of Sociology, Herbert Spencer re- 
marks that " it would clear up our ideas about many 
things, if we distinctly recognized the truth that we have 
two religions." These two religions Mr. Spencer desig- 
nates as the " religion of amity " and the " religion of 
enmity." " Of course," he says, " I don't mean that 
these are both called religions. Here I am not speaking 
of names ; I am speaking simply of things. Nowadays 
men do not pay the same nominal homage to the religion 
of enmity that they do to the religion of amity — the re- 
ligion of amity occupies the place of honor. But the real 
homage is paid in large measure, if not in the larger 
measure, to the religion of enmity. The religion of 
enmity nearly all men actually believe. The religion of 
amity most of them merely believe they believe." " The 
Church of Rome," said F. W. Robertson, in his sermon 
on The Tongue, " hurls her thunders against Protestants 
of every denomination ; the Calvinist scarcely recognizes 
the Arminian as a Christian ; he who considers himself 
as the true Anglican excludes from the church of Christ 
all but the adherents of his own orthodoxy ; every minis- 
ter and congregation has its small circle, beyond which 
all are heretics ; nay, even among that sect which is most 



366 LIBRARY NOTES. 

lax as to the dogmatic forms of truth, we find the Unita- 
rian of the old school denouncing the spiritualism of the 
new and rising school. Sisters of Charity refuse to per- 
mit an act of charity to be done by a Samaritan ; minis- 
ters of the gospel fling the thunder-bolts of the Lord ; 
ignorant hearers catch and exaggerate the spirit ; boys, 
girls, and women shudder as one goes by, perhaps more 
holy than themselves, who adores the same God, believes 
in the same Redeemer, struggles in the same life-battle 
— and all this because they have been taught to look 
upon him as an enemy of God." " Particular churches 
and sects," says Sir Thomas Browne, " usurp the gates of 
heaven, and turn the keys against each other ; and thus 
we go to heaven against each others' wills, conceits, and 
opinions." "The church of the future," in the opinion of 
Father Hyacinthe, " will know nothing of such divisions, 
such discordances, and she will uphold the freedom of 
theologies and the diversity of rites in the unity of one 
faith and of one worship." " As soon," said Goethe, "as 
the pure doctrine and love of Christ are comprehended 
in their true nature, and have become a vital principle, 
we shall feel ourselves as human beings, great and free, 
and not attach especial importance to a degree more or 
less in the outward forms of religion : besides, we shall 
all gradually advance from a Christianity of words and 
faith to a Christianity of feeling and action." "Could 
we," said Dean Young, " but once descend from our high 
pretenses of religion to the humility that only makes men 
religious, could we but once prefer Christianity itself be- 
fore the several factions that bear its name, our differ- 
ences would sink of themselves ; and it would appear to 
us that there is more religion in not contending than 
there is in the matter we contend about." " Do you re- 
member," asks the author of The Eclipse of Faith, "the 
passage in Woodstock, in which our old favorite repre- 
sents the Episcopalian Rochecliffe and the Presbyterian 



RELIGION. 367 

Holdenough meeting unexpectedly in prison, after many- 
years of separation, during which one had thought the 
other dead ? How sincerely glad they were, and how 
pleasantly they talked ; when, lo ! an unhappy reference 
to ' the bishopric of Titus ' gradually abated the fervor of 
their charity, and inflamed that of their zeal, even till 
they at last separated in mutual dudgeon, and sat glower- 
ing at each other in their distant corners with looks in 
which the ' Episcopalian ' and ' Presbyterian ' were much 
more evident than the ' Christian : ' and so they perse- 
vered till the sudden summons to them and their fellow- 
prisoners, to prepare for instant execution, dissolved as 
with a charm the anger they had felt, and ' Forgive me, 
O my brother,' and ' I have sinned against thee, my 
brother,' broke from their lips as they took what they 
thought would be a last farewell." " I sometimes," says 
Froude, " in impatient moments, wish the laity would 
treat their controversial divines as two gentlemen once 
treated their seconds, when they found themselves forced 
into a duel without knowing what they were quarreling 
about. As the principals were being led up to their 
places, one of them whispered to the other, ' If you will 
shoot your second, I will shoot mine.' " 

Benjamin Lay, a violent enthusiast and harsh reformer 
— contemporary with John Woolman — was, it is said, 
well acquainted with Dr. Franklin, who sometimes visited 
him. Among other schemes of reform he entertained the 
idea of converting all mankind to Christianity. This was 
to be done by three persons — himself and two other 
enthusiasts, assisted by Dr. Franklin. But on their first 
meeting at the doctor's house, the three " chosen ves- 
sels " got into a violent controversy on points of doctrine, 
and separated in ill-humor. The philosopher, who had 
been an amused listener, advised the three sages to give 
up the project of converting the world until they had 
learned to tolerate each other. 



368 LIBRARY NOTES. 

"Man," says Harrington, in his Political Aphorisms, 
" may rather be defined a religious than a rational creat- 
ure, in regard that in other creatures there may be some- 
thing of reason, but there is nothing of religion." " If 
you travel through the world well," says Plutarch, " you 
may find cities without walls, without literature, without 
kings, moneyless, and such as desire no coin ; which 
know not what theatres or public halls of bodily exercise 
mean ; but never was there, nor ever shall there be, any 
one city seen without temple, church, or chapel ; with- 
out some god or other ; which useth no prayers nor 
oaths, no prophecies and divinations, no sacrifices, either 
to obtain good blessings or to avert heavy curses and 
calamities. Nay, methinks a man should sooner find 
a city built in the air, without any plot of ground whereon 
it is seated, than that any commonwealth altogether void 
of religion and the opinion of the gods should either be 
first established, or afterward preserved and maintained 
in that estate. This is that containeth and holdeth to- 
gether all human society ; this is the foundation, prop, 
and stay of all." 

The holy Nanac on the ground one day, 
Reclining with his feet toward Mecca, lay; 
A passing Moslem priest, offended, saw, 
And flaming for the honor of his law, 
Exclaimed : " Base infidel, thy prayers repeat ! 
Toward Allah's house how dar'st thou turn thy feet ? " 
Before the Moslem's shallow accents died, 
The pious but indignant Nanac cried : 
" And turn then, if thou canst, toward any spot, 
Wherein the awful house of God is not ! " 

"How striking a proof is it," says a writer on The 
Religions of India, " of the strength of the adoring prin- 
ciple in human nature — what an illustration of man- 
kind's sense of dependence upon an unseen Supreme — 
that the grandest works which the nations have reared are 
those connected with religion ! Were a spirit from some 



RELIGION. 369 

distant world to look down upon the surface of our planet 
as it spins round in the solar rays, his eye would be most 
attracted, as the morning light passed onward, by the 
glittering and painted pagodas of China, Borneo, and 
Japan ; the richly ornamented temples and stupendous 
rock shrines of India ; the dome-topped mosques and tall, 
slender minarets of Western Asia ; the pyramids and vast 
temples of Egypt, with their mile-long avenues of gigantic 
statues and sphinxes; the graceful shrines of classic 
Greece ; the basilicas of Rome and Byzantium ; the semi- 
oriental church-domes of Moscow ; the Gothic cathedrals 
of Western Europe : and as the day closed, the light 
would fall dimly upon the ruins of the grand sun-temples 
of Mexico and Peru, where, in the infancy of reason and 
humanity, human sacrifices were offered up, as if the All- 
Father were pleased with the agony of his creatures ! " 

"Moral rules," says Matthew Arnold, in his Essay on 
Marcus Aurelius, " apprehended as ideas first, and then 
rigorously followed as laws, are and must be for the sage 
only. The mass of mankind have neither force of intel- 
lect enough to apprehend them clearly as ideas, nor force 
of character enough to follow them strictly as laws. The 
mass of mankind can be carried along a course full of 
hardships for the natural man, can be borne over the 
thousand impediments of the narrow way, only by the tide 
of a joyful and bounding emotion. It is impossible to 
rise from reading Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius without 
a sense of constraint and melancholy, without feeling that 
the burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than he 
can bear. Honor to the sages who have felt this, and yet 
have borne it ! . . . . For the ordinary man, this sense 
of labor and sorrow constitutes an absolute disqualifica- 
tion ; it paralyzes him ; under the weight of it he cannot 
make way toward the goal at all. The paramount virtue 
of religion is that it has lighted up morality ; that it has 
supplied the emotion and inspiration needful for carrying 
24 



370 



LIBRARY NOTES. 



the sage along the narrow way perfectly, for carrying the 
ordinary man along it at all. Even the religions with most 
dross in them have had something of this virtue ; but the 
Christian religion manifests it with unexampled splen- 
dor." The Duke de Chaulnes once said to Dr. Johnson 
that " every religion had a certain degree of morality in 
it." "Ay, my lord," answered he, "but the Christian re- 
ligion alone puts it on its proper basis." " It is Chris- 
tianity alone," said Max Miiller, "which, as the religion 
of humanity, as the religion of no caste, of no chosen peo- 
ple, has taught us to respect the history of humanity as a 
whole, to discover the traces of a divine wisdom and love 
in the government of all the races of mankind, and to 
recognize, if possible, even in the lowest and crudest 
forms of religious belief, not the work of demoniacal 
agencies, but something that indicates a divine guidance, 
something that makes us perceive, with St. Peter, ' that 
God is no respecter of persons, but that in every nation 
he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is ac- 
cepted with Him.' " " There is a principle," said John 
Woolman — " the man who," it is said, " in all the cent- 
uries since the advent of Christ, lived nearest to the Di- 
vine pattern " — " there is a principle," said that Chris- 
tian man, "which is pure, placed in the human mind, 
which in different places and ages hath had different 
names ; it is, however, pure, and proceeds from God. It 
is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion nor 
excluded from any, when the heart stands in perfect sin- 
cerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, they 
become brethren." 

" The turning-point," remarks Frances Power Cobbe, 
"between the old world and the new was the beginning 
of the Christian movement. The action upon human 
nature, which started on its new course, was the teaching 
and example of Christ. Christ was he who opened the 
age of endless progress. The old world grew from with- 



RELIGION. 371 

out, and was outwardly symmetric. The new one grows 
from within, and is not symmetric, nor ever will be ; bear- 
ing in its heart the germ of an everlasting, unresting prog- 
ress. The old world built its temples, hewed its statues, 
framed its philosophies, and wrote its glorious epics and 
dramas, so that nothing might evermore be added to 
them. The new world made its art, its philosophy, its 
poetry, all imperfect, yet instinct with a living spirit be- 
yond the old. To the Parthenon not a stone could be 
added from the hour of its completion. To Milan and 
Cologne altar and chapel, statue and spire, will be added 
through the ages. Christ was not merely a moral re- 
former, inculcating pure ethics ; not merely a religious re- 
former, clearing away old theological errors and teaching 
higher ideas of God. These things He was ; but He 
might, for all we can tell, have been them both as fully, 
and yet have failed to be what He has actually been to 
our race. He might have taught the world better ethics 
and better theology, and yet have failed to infuse into it 
that new tide which has ever since coursed through its 
arteries and penetrated its minutest veins. What Christ 
has really done is beyond the kingdom of the intellect 
and its theologies ; nay, even beyond the kingdom of the 
conscience and its recognition of duty. His work has 
been in that of the heart. He has transformed the law 
into the gospel. He has changed the bondage of the 
alien for the liberty of the sons of God. He has glori- 
fied virtue into holiness, religion into piety, and duty into 
love." His was " a religion," says Jeremy Taylor, " that 
t'aught men to be meek and humble, apt to receive in- 
juries, but unapt to do any; a religion that gave coun- 
tenance to the poor and pitiful, in a time when riches 
were adored, and ambition and pleasure had possessed 
the heart of all mankind ; a religion that would change 
the face of things and the hearts of men, and break vile 
habits into gentleness and counsel." " Christianity has 



372 LIBRARY NOTES. 

that in it," says Steele, in the Christian Hero, "which 
makes men pity, not scorn the wicked ; and, by a beauti- 
ful kind of ignorance of themselves, think those wretches 
their equals." " Great and multiform," observes Lecky, 
in his History of European Morals, — summing up some 
of the results of Christianity, — " great and multiform have 
been the influences of Christian philanthropy. The high 
conception that has been formed of the sanctity of human 
life, the protection of infancy, the elevation and final 
emancipation of the slave classes, the suppression of bar- 
barous games, the creation of a vast and multifarious 
organization of charity, and the education of the imagina- 
tion by the Christian type, constituted together a move- 
ment of philanthropy which has never been paralleled or 
approached in the pagan world." 

" If there be any good in thee," says the author of the 
Imitation, "believe that there is much more in others, 
that so thou mayest preserve humility. It hurteth thee 
not to submit to all men ; but it hurteth thee most of all 
to prefer thyself even to one." Sir Henry Wotton being 
asked if he thought a Papist could be saved, replied, 
" You may be saved without knowing that." " Be as- 
sured," said Dean Young, "there can be but little honesty 
without thinking as well as possible of others ; and there 
can be no safety without thinking humbly and distrust- 
fully of ourselves." " It is easy," said Peterborough, in 
Imaginary Conversations, " to look down on others ; to 
look down on ourselves is the difficulty." "The charac- 
ter of a wise man," says Confucius, " consists in three 
things : to do himself what he tells others to do ; to act 
on no occasion contrary to justice ; and to bear with the 
weaknesses of those around him. Treat inferiors as if 
you might one day be in the hands of a master." " I rec- 
ollect," says Saadi, "the verse which the elephant-driver 
rehearsed on the banks of the river Nile : ' If you are 
ignorant of the state of the ant under your foot, know 



RELIGION. 373 

that it resembles your own condition under the foot of 
the elephant.' " The stable of Confucius being burned 
down, when he was at court, on his return he said, " Has 
any man been hurt ? " He did not ask about the horses. 
Of the death of Sir Roger de Coverley, his butler (Addi- 
son himself) wrote to The Spectator : " I am afraid he 
caught his death the last county-sessions, where he would 
go to see justice done to a poor widow woman, and her 
fatherless children, that had been wronged by a neighbor- 
ing gentleman ; for you know, sir, my good master was 
always the poor man's friend." Fenelon had a habit of 
bringing into his palace the wretched inhabitants of the 
country, whom the war had driven from their homes, and 
taking care of them, and feeding them at his own table, 
Seeing one day that one of these peasants eat nothing, 
he asked him the reason of his abstinence. " Alas ! my 
lord," said the poor man, " in making my escape from my 
cottage, I had not time to bring off my cow, which was the 
support of my family. The enemy will drive her away, 
and I shall never find another so good." Fenelon, avail- 
ing himself of his privilege of safe-conduct, immediately 
set out, accompanied by a servant, and drove the cow 
back himself to the peasant. A literary man, whose li- 
brary was destroyed by fire, has been deservedly admired 
for saying, " I should have profited but little by my books, 
if they had not taught me how to bear the loss of them." 
The remark of Fenelon, who lost his in a similar way, is 
still more simple and touching. " I would much rather 
they were burnt than the cottage of a poor peasant." 
Lord Peterborough said of Fe'nelon, " He was a delicious 
creature. I was obliged to get away from him, or he 
would have made me pious." The influence of such a 
character brings to mind another passage from Saadi. 
"One day," he says, "as I was in the bath, a friend of 
mine put into my hand a piece of scented clay. I took 
it, and said to it, ' Art thou of heaven or earth ? for I am 



374 



LIBRARY NOTES. 



charmed with thy delightful scent.' It answered, ' I was 
a despicable piece of clay ; but I was some time in com- 
pany of the rose : the sweet quality of my companion was 
communicated to me ; otherwise I should have remained 
only what I appear to be, a bit of earth.' " 

" If thou canst not make thyself such an one as thou 
wouldst," quoting the Imitation of Christ, "how canst thou 
expect to have another in all things to thy liking ? We 
would willingly have others perfect, and yet we amend 
not our own faults. We would have others severely cor- 
rected, and will not be corrected ourselves. The large 
liberty of others displeaseth us ; and yet we will not have 
our own desires denied us. We will have others kept 
under by strict laws ; but in no sort will ourselves be re- 
strained. And thus it appeareth how seldom we weigh 
our neighbor in the same balance with ourselves." Re- 
calling the apologue from Phaedrus, paraphrased by Bul- 
wer : — 

" From our necks, when life's journey begins, 

Two sacks, Jove, the Father, suspends, 
The one holds our own proper sins, 

The other the sins of our friends : 

" The first, Man immediately throws 

Out of sight, out of mind, at his back ; 
The last is so under his nose, 
He sees every grain in the sack." 

Addison, in one of the papers of The Spectator, en- 
larges upon the thought of Socrates, that if all the mis- 
fortunes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in order 
to be equally distributed among the whole species, those 
who now think themselves the most unhappy would pre- 
fer the share they are already possessed of before that 
which would fall to them by such a division — by imagin- 
ing a proclamation made by Jupiter, that every mortal 
should bring in his griefs and calamities, and throw them 
in a heap. There was a large plain appointed for this 



RELIGION. 375 

purpose. He took his stand in the centre of it, and saw 
the whole human species marching one after another, and 
throwing down their several loads, which immediately 
grew up into a prodigious mountain, that seemed to rise 
above the clouds. He observed one bringing in a bundle 
very carefully concealed under an old embroidered cloak, 
which, upon his throwing into the heap, he discovered to 
be poverty. Another, after a great deal of puffing, threw 
down his luggage, which, upon examining, he found to be 
his wife. He saw multitudes of old women throw down 
their wrinkles, and several young ones strip themselves of 
their tawny skins. There were very great heaps of red 
noses, large lips, and rusty teeth, — in truth, he was sur- 
prised to see the greatest part of the mountain made up 
of bodily deformities. Observing one advancing toward 
the heap with a larger cargo than ordinary upon his back, 
he found upon his near approach that it was only a natu- 
ral hump, which he disposed of with great joy of heart 
among the collection of human miseries. But what most 
surprised him of all was that there was not a single vice 
or folly thrown in the whole heap ; at which he was very 
much astonished, having concluded with himself that 
every one would take this opportunity of getting rid of 
his passions, prejudices, and frailties. 

" Passions, prejudices, and frailties ! " " There is no 
man so good," says Montaigne, " who, were he to submit 
all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve 
hanging ten times in his life. [Talleyrand, when Rulhiere 
said he had been guilty of only one wickedness in his life, 
asked, " When will it end ? "] We are so far from being 
good men, according to the laws of God, that we cannot 
be so according to our own ; human wisdom never yet 
arrived at the duty that it had itself prescribed ; and 
could it arrive there, it would still prescribe itself others 
beyond it, to which it would ever aspire and pretend ; so 
great an enemy of consistency is our human condition." 



376 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Of prejudice it has been truly said by Basil Montagu, in 
a note to one of his publications, that " it has the singu- 
lar ability of accommodating itself to all the possible va- 
rieties of the human mind. Some passions and vices 
are but thinly scattered among mankind, and find only 
here and there a fitness of reception. But prejudice, like 
the spider, makes everywhere its home. It has neither 
taste nor choice of place, and all that it requires is room. 
There is scarcely a situation, except fire and water, in 
which a spider will not live. So let the mind be as naked 
as the walls of an empty and forsaken tenement, gloomy 
as a dungeon, or ornamented with the richest abilities of 
thinking ; let it be hot, cold, dark or light, lonely or in- 
habited, still prejudice, if undisturbed, will fill it with 
cobwebs, and live, like the spider, where there seems 
nothing to live on. If the one prepares her food by poi- 
soning it to her palate and her use, the other does the 
same ; and as several of our passions are strongly charac- 
terized by the animal world, prejudice may be denomi- 
nated the spider of the mind." " We are all frail, but do 
thou esteem none more frail than thyself." "Those many 
that need pity," says Jeremy Taylor, "and those infinities 
of people that refuse to pity, are miserable upon a several 
charge, but yet they almost make up all mankind." 

" Lord, what is man — what the best of men — but man 
at the best ! " exclaimed the impassioned and pious 
Whitefield. 

" Then gently scan your brother man, 

Still gentler sister woman ; 
Though they may gang a kennin wrang, 

To step aside is human : 
One point must still be greatly dark, 

The moving why they do it : 
And just as lamely can ye mark, 

How far perhaps they rue it. 

" Who made the heart, 't is He alone 
Decidedly can try us, 



RELIGION. 377 

He knows each chord — its various tone, 

Each spring — its various bias : 
Then at the balance let 's be mute, 

We never can adjust it ; 
What 's done we partly may compute, 

But know not what 's resisted." 

It is said that when Leonardo da Vinci had finished 
his celebrated picture of the Last Supper, he introduced 
a friend to inspect the work privately, and give his judg- 
ment concerning it. " Exquisite ! " exclaimed his friend ; 
" that wine-cup seems to stand out from the table as solid, 
glittering silver." Thereupon the artist took a brush and 
blotted out the cup, saying, " I meant that the figure of 
Christ should first and mainly attract the observer's eye, 
and whatever diverts attention from him must be blotted 
out." Could we poor mortals just as readily blot out of 
our lives whatever diverts attention from the real good 
that is in us, how differently would we appear to others. 

" Artists," says Hawthorne, " are fond of painting their 
own portraits ; and in Florence, there is a gallery of 
hundreds of them, including the most illustrious, in all 
of which there are autobiographical characteristics, so 
to speak ; traits, expressions, loftinesses, and amenities, 
which would have been invisible had they not been 
painted from within. Yet their reality and truth are 
none the less." 

A good woman, who had bred a large family, and led 
a long life of devotion and self-sacrifice — worn out by 
care, and weary of her burdens — came at length to what 
was supposed to be her death-bed. A clergyman in the 
neighborhood thought it to be his duty to call upon her. 
He asked her in usual language if she had made her 
peace with her Maker j to which she replied that she was 
not aware that there had been any trouble. 

"The most important thing in life," said Pascal, "is 
the choice of a profession ; and yet this is a thing purely 
in the disposal of chance.''" We, however, take little or 



$y8 LIBRARY NOTES. 

no account of the effects of particular professions or oc- 
cupations upon the mind and character, holding all alike 
responsible for opinions and conduct. It does not occur 
to us as possible that even suicide and murder may pri- 
marily result from vocation. Rosch and Esquirol affirm 
from observation that indigo-dyers become melancholy; 
and those who dye scarlet, choleric. 

Cottle, the bookseller, wrote with a pencil some lines 
on the wall of the room in Bristol, Newgate, where poor 
Savage died, which were admired by Coleridge. These 
are two of them : — 

" If some virtues in thy breast there be, 
Ask if they sprang from circumstance or thee." 

So much, alas, must be known to judge of a human life. 
Could we only know that we cannot know enough to 
judge one another, to say nothing of the indispensable 
wisdom that surpasses all knowledge. Happily, God is 
Judge. 

Knowledge, in the common sense, as commonly ac- 
quired, what is it ? 

Some need much time to know a little ; others know at 
a glance all that they can. Cumberland said Bubb Dod- 
dington was in nothing more remarkable than in ready 
perspicuity and discernment of a subject thrown before 
him on a sudden. " Take his first thoughts then, and he 
would charm you ; give him time to ponder and refine, 
you would perceive the spirit of his sentiments and the 
vigor of his genius evaporate by the process ; for though 
his first view of the question would be a wide one, and 
clear withal, when he came to exercise the subtlety of his 
disquisitional powers upon it, he would so ingeniously 
dissect and break it into fractions, that as an object, 
when looked upon too intently for a length of time, grows 
misty and confused, so would the question under his dis- 
cussion when the humor took him to be hypercritical. ,, 
Coleridge said Home Tooke " had that clearness which 



RELIGION. 379 

is founded on shallowness. He doubted nothing, and 
therefore gave you all that he himself knew, or meant, 
with great completeness." Thucydides said of Themis- 
tocles that "he had the best judgment in actual circum- 
stances, and he formed his judgment with the least delib- 
eration." Quick or deliberate, shallow or profound, all 
are apt to assume to know all, when they may be little 
wiser, in truth, than ^Esop's two travelers who had visited 
Arabia, and were conversing together about the chame- 
leon. " A very singular animal," said one, " I never saw 
one at all like it in my life. It has the head of a fish, its 
body is as thin as that of a lizard, its pace is slow, its 
color blue." " Stop there," said the other, " you are quite 
mistaken, the animal is green ; I saw it with my two 
eyes." " I saw it as well as you," cried the first, " and I 
am certain that it is blue." " I am positive that it is 
green." "And I that it is blue." The travelers were 
getting very angry with each other, and were about to 
settle the disputed point by blows, when happily a third 
person arrived. " Well, gentlemen, what is the mattei 
here ? Calm yourselves, I pray you." " Will you be the 
judge of our quarrel ? " " Yes ; what is it ? " " This 
person maintains that the chameleon is green, while I 
say that it is blue." " My dear sirs, you are both in the 
wrong; the animal is neither one nor the other — it is 
black." " Black ! you must be jesting ! " " Not at all, 
I assure you ; I have one with me in a box, and you 
shall judge for yourselves." The box was produced and 
opened, when, to the surprise of all three, the animal was 
as yellow as gold ! In one of the Hindoo books we are 
told that in a certain country there existed a village of 
the blind men. These men had heard that there was 
an amazing animal called the elephant, but they knew 
not how to form an idea of his shape. One day an el- 
ephant happened to pass through the place ; the villagers 
crowded to the spot where this animal was standing. 



380 LIBRARY NOTES. 

One of them got hold of his trunk, another seized his 
ear, another his tail, another one of his legs, etc. After 
thus trying to gratify their curiosity, they returned into 
the village, and, sitting down together, they began to 
give their ideas of what the elephant was like ; the man 
who had seized his trunk said he thought the elephant 
was like the body of the plantain-tree ; the man who 
had felt his ear said he thought he was like the fan 
with which the Hindoos clean the rice • the man who 
had felt his tail said he thought he must be like a snake, 
and the man who had seized his leg thought he must be 
like a pillar. An old blind man of some judgment was 
present, who was greatly perplexed how to reconcile these 
jarring notions respecting the form of the elephant, but 
he at length said, " You have all been to examine this 
animal, it is true, and what you report cannot be false. 
I suppose, therefore, that that which was like the plan- 
tain-tree must be his trunk ; that which was like a fan 
must be his ear ; that which was like a snake must be his 
tail, and that which was like a pillar must be his body." 
Once upon a time a pastor of a village church adopted a 
plan to interest the members of his flock in the study of 
the Bible. It was this : " At the Wednesday evening 
meeting he would announce the topic to be discussed on 
the ensuing week, thus giving a week for preparation. 
One evening the subject was St. Paul. After the prelim- 
inary devotional exercises, the pastor called upon one of 
the deacons to ' speak to the question.' He immediately 
arose, and began to describe the personal appearance of 
the great apostle to the Gentiles. He said St. Paul was 
a tall, rather spare man, with black hair and eyes, dark 
complexion, bilious temperament, etc. His picture of 
Paul was a faithful portrait of himself. He sat down, 
and another prominent member arose and said, ' I think 
the brother preceding me has read the Scriptures to little 
purpose if his description of St. Paul is a sample of his 



RELIGION. 381 

Bible knowledge. St. Paul was, as I understand it, a 
rather short, thick-set man, with sandy hair, gray eyes, 
florid complexion, and a nervous, sanguine temperament,' 
giving, like his predecessor, an accurate picture of him- 
self. He was followed by another who had a keen sense 
of the ludicrous, and who was withal an inveterate stam- 
merer. He said, ' My bro-bro-brethren, I have never 
fo-found in my Bi-ble much about the p-per-personal ap- 
pe-pearance of St. P-p-paul. But one thing is clearly es- 
tablished, and tha-that is, St. P-p-paul had an imp-p-pedi- 
ment in his speech.' " 

"Having lived long," said Dr. Franklin, "I have ex- 
perienced many instances of being obliged, by better in- 
formation, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even 
on important subjects, which I once thought right, but I 
found to be otherwise. It is, therefore, that the older I 
grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and 
to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most 
men, indeed, as well as most sects in religion, think them- 
selves in possession of all truth, and that whenever others 
differ from them, it is so far error. Steele, a Protestant, 
in a dedication tells the pope that 'the only difference 
between our two churches, in their opinions of the cer- 
tainty of their doctrines is, the Romish Church is infalli- 
ble, and the Church of England never in the wrong.' 
But, though many private persons think almost as highly 
of their own infallibility as that of their sect, few express 
it so naturally as a certain French lady who, in a little 
dispute with her sister, said, ' I don't know how it hap- 
pens, sister, but I meet with nobody but myself that is 
always in the right.' " " I could never," says Sir Thomas 
Browne, " divide myself from any man upon the difference 
of an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not 
agreeing with me in that from which, perhaps, within a 
few days, I should dissent myself." " Whoever shall call 
to memory how many and many times he has been mis- 



382 LIBRARY NOTES. 

taken in his own judgment," says the great French essay- 
ist, " is he not a great fool if he does not ever after dis- 
trust it ? " " Beware," said John Wesley, " of forming a 
hasty judgment. There are secrets which few but God are 
acquainted with. Some years since I told a gentleman, 
'Sir, I am afraid you are covetous.' He asked me, 'What 
is the reason of your fears ? ' I answered, ' A year ago, 
when I made a collection for the expense of repairing the 
Foundry, you subscribed five guineas. At the subscrip- 
tion made this year you subscribed only half a guinea.' 
He made no reply ; but after a time asked, ' Pray, sir, 
answer me a question. Why do you live upon potatoes ?' 
(I did so between three and four years.) I replied, ' It 
has much conduced to my health.' He answered, ' I 
believe it has. But did you not do it likewise to save 
money ? ' I said, ' I did, for what I save from my own 
meat will feed another that else would have none.' 'But, 
sir,' said he, ' if this be your motive, you may save much 
more. I know a man that goes to the market at the be- 
ginning of each week. There he buys a pennyworth of 
parsnips, which he boils in a large quantity of water. 
The parsnips serve him for food, and the water for drink, 
the ensuing week, so his meat and drink together cost 
him only a penny a week.' This he constantly did, though 
he had then two hundred pounds a year, to pay the debts 
which he had contracted before he knew God ! And this 
was he I had set down for a covetous man." " We shall 
have two wonders in heaven," said the wise and gentle 
Tillotson ; " the one, how many come to be absent whom 
we expected to find there ; the other, how many are there 
whom we had no hope of meeting." There is significance 
in the epitaph by Steele, in The Spectator : " Here lieth 
R. C., in expectation of the last day. What sort of a man 
he was that day will discover." 

It would seem that, as things are, there is nothing so 
natural as intolerance ; and it is not to be wondered at 



RELIGION. 383 

that the language to express toleration should be of mod- 
ern invention. Coleridge was of opinion " that toleration 
was impossible till indifference made it worthless." Dr. 
King had a different view ; he said, " The opinion of any 
one in this world, except the wise and good, who do not 
aspire to be even tolerant, — who are too modest to be 
tolerant, since toleration implies superiority, — is of little 
consequence." Hunt said of Lamb, that " he had felt, 
thought, and suffered so much, that he literally had intol- 
erance for nothing." Palgrave, in his Travels through 
Central and Eastern Arabia, relates of Abd-el-Lateef, a 
Wahabee, that one day seeing a corpulent Hindoo, he 
exclaimed, " What a log for hell-fire ! " This follower of 
Mahomet had not only the intolerance, but the conceit 
of super-excellence that the poor sectarian followers of 
Christ too often have. When he was preaching one day 
to the people of Riad, he recounted the tradition accord- 
ing to which Mahomet declared that his followers should 
divide into seventy-three sects, and that seventy-two were 
destined to hell-fire, and only one to paradise. "And what, 
O messenger of God, are the signs of that happy sect to 
which is insured the exclusive possession of paradise ? " 
Whereto Mahomet had replied, " It is those who shall be 
in all comformable to myself and my companions." " And 
that," added Abd-el-Lateef, lowering his voice to the deep 
tone of conviction, " that, by the mercy of God, are we, 
the people of Riad." 

Upon the subject of toleration and charity, read a part 
of the remarkable dialogue from Arthur Helps' Friends 
in Council : — 

Dunsford. — It is hard to be tolerant of intolerant 
people ; to see how natural their intolerance is, and in 
fact thoroughly to comprehend it and feel for it. This is 
the last stage of tolerance, which few men, I suppose, in 
this world attain. 

Midhurst. — Tolerance appears to me an unworked 
mine 



384 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Milverton. — There is one great difficulty to be sur- 
mounted ; and that is, how to make hard, clear, righteous 
men, who have not sinned much, have not suffered much, 
are not afflicted by strong passions, who have not many 
ties in the world, and who have been easily prosperous, 
— how to make such men tolerant. Think of this for a 
moment. For a man who has been rigidly good to be 
supremely tolerant would require an amount of insight 
which seems to belong only to the greatest genius. I have 
often fancied that the main scheme of the world is to 
create tenderness in man ; and I have a notion that the 
outer world would change if man were to acquire more of 
this tenderness. You see at present he is obliged to be 
kept down by urgent wants of all kinds, or he would 
otherwise have more time and thought to devote to cruelty 
and discord. If he could live in a better world, I mean 
in a world where nature was more propitious, I believe 
he would have such a world. And in some mysterious 
way, I suspect that nature is constrained to adapt herself 
to the main impress of the character of the average beings 
in the world. 

Ellesmere. — These are very extraordinary thoughts. 

Dunsford. — They are not far from Christianity. 

Milverton. — You must admit, Ellesmere, that Chris- 
tianity has never been tried. I do not ask you to canvass 
doctrinal and controversial matters. But take the lead- 
ing precepts ; read the Sermon on the Mount, and see if 
it is the least like the doctrines of modern life. 

Dunsford. — I cannot help thinking, when you are all 
talking of tolerance, why you do not use the better word, 
of which we hear something in Scripture, — charity. 

Milverton. — If I were a. clergyman, there is much 
that I should dislike to have to say (being a man of very 
dubious mind) ; there is much also that I should dislike 
to have to read ; but I should feel that it was a great day 
for me when I had to read out that short but most abound- 



RELIGION. 385 

ing chapter from St. Paul on charity. The more you 
study that chapter, the more profound you find it. The 
way that the apostle begins is most remarkable ; and I 
doubt if it has been often duly considered. We think 
much of knowledge in our own times ; but consider what 
the early Christian must have thought of one who pos- 
sessed the gift of tongues or the gift of prophecy. Think 
also what the early Christian must have thought of the 
man who possessed " all faith." Then listen to St. Paul's 
summing up of these great gifts in comparison with char- 
ity. Dunsford, will you give us the words ? You remem- 
ber them, I dare say. 

Dunsford. — (1 Cor. ch. xiii.) " Though I speak with 
the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, 
I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 

"And though I have the gift of prophecy, and under- 
stand all mysteries, and all knowledge ; and though I 
have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have 
not charity, I am nothing." 

Milverton. — You will let me proceed, I know, if it is 
only to hear more from Dunsford of that chapter. I have 
said that the early Christian would have thought much of 
the man who possessed the gift of tongues, of prophecy, of 
faith. But how he must have venerated the rich man who 
entered into his little community, and gave up all his 
goods to the poor ! Again, how the early Christian must 
have regarded with longing admiration the first martyrs 
for his creed ! Then hear what St. Paul says of this out- 
ward charity, and of this martyrdom, when compared with 
this infinitely more difficult charity of the soul and mar- 
tyrdom of the temper. Dunsford will proceed with the 
chapter. 

Dunsford. — " And though I bestow all my goods to 
feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, 
and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." 

Milverton. — Pray go on, Dunsford. 
25 



386 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Dunsford. — " Charity sufTereth long, and is kind ; 
chanty envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not 
puffed up, 

" Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her 
own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil ; 

" Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; 

" Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all 
things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth : but 
whether there be prophecies, they shall fail ; whether 
there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be 
knowledge, it shall vanish away." 

Milverton. — That is surely one of the most beau- 
tiful things that has ever been written by man. It does 
not do to talk much after it. 

Channing closes his Essay upon the Means of Promot- 
ing Christianity with this remarkable passage : " If, in this 
age of societies, we should think it wise to recommend 
another institution for the propagation of Christianity, it 
would be one the members of which should be pledged to 
assist and animate one another in living according to the 
Sermon on the Mount. How far such a measure would 
be effectual we venture not to predict ; but of one thing 
we are sure, that, should it prosper, it would do more for 
spreading the gospel than all other associations which are 
now receiving the patronage of the Christian world." 

At the White House, on an occasion I shall never 
forget, said a visitor, the conversation turned upon re- 
ligious subjects, and Lincoln made this impressive re- 
mark : " I have never united myself to any church, be- 
cause I have found difficulty in giving my assent, without 
mental reservation, to the long, complicated statements 
of Christian doctrine which characterize their articles of 
belief and confessions of faith. When any church will 
inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for member- 
ship," he continued, " the Saviour's condensed statement 
of the substance of both law and gospel, Thou shalt love 



RELIGION. 387 

the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, 
and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself, that 
church will I join with all my heart and all my soul." 

" You may remember," says Farrar, in his Silence and 
Voices of God, " how, in the old legend, St. Brendan, in 
his northward voyage, saw a man sitting upon an iceberg, 
and with horror recognized him as the traitor Judas Is- 
cariot ; and the traitor told him how, at Christmas time, 
amid the drench of the burning lake, an angel had touched 
his arm, and bidden him for one hour to cool his agony 
on an iceberg in the Arctic sea ; and when he asked the 
cause of this mercy, bade him recognize in him a leper 
to whom in Joppa streets he had given a cloak to shelter 
him from the wind ; and how for that one kind deed this 
respite was allotted him. Let us reject the ghastly side 
of the legend, and accept its truth. Yes, charity, — love 
to God as shown in love to man — is better than all 
burnt-offering and sacrifice." " In thy face," said the dy- 
ing Bunsen to the wife of his heart, bending over him, 
" in thy face have I seen the Eternal." 

When Abraham, according to another old legend, sat 
at his tent door, as was his custom, waiting to entertain 
strangers, he espied coming toward him an old man, 
stooping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and 
travail, who was a hundred years of age. He received 
him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, caused him 
to sit down ; but observing that the old man eat, and 
prayed not, nor begged for blessing on his meat, he asked 
him why he did not worship the God of heaven. The 
old man told him that he worshiped the fire only, and 
acknowledged no other God. At which answer Abraham 
grew so zealously angry that he thrust the old man out of 
his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and 
an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, 
God called to Abraham, and asked him where the stran- 
ger was. He replied, " I thrust him away because he did 



388 LIBRARY NOTES. 

not worship Thee." God answered him, " I have suffered 
him these hundred years, although he dishonored me j 
and couldst not thou endure him one night ? " 

" Ah ! poor things that we are. We are all sore with 
many bruises and wounds. The marvel is that our own 
tenderness does not make us tender to all others." 

" He shall be immortal who liveth till he be stoned by 
one without fault." 

" I saw in Rome," said Austin, " an old coin, a silver 
denarius, all coated and crusted with green and purple 
rust. I called it rust, but Albert told me it was copper 
and the alloy thrown out from the silver, till all left within 
is pure. It takes ages to do it, but it does get done." 
" Souls are like that," said Canon Farrar. Something 
moves in them, slowly but surely, till the debasement is 
all thrown out, and the very varnish of the surface is 
made to disappear. 

" Day by day I think I read more plain, 
This crowning truth, that, spite of sin and pain, 
No life that God has given is lived in vain ; 
But each poor, weak, and sin-polluted soul 
Shall struggle free at last, and reach its goal, — 
A perfect part of God's great perfect whole." 



INDEX. 



Abernethy, a timid lecturer, 255. 

Abd-el-Lateef, anecdote of, 383. 

Addison, on living and dressing accord- 
ing to the rules of common sense, 64 ; 
his care in composition, 127; reputed 
portrait of, 1S9 ; his belief in ghosts, 
243 ; his marriage, 246; enlarges on a 
thought of Socrates, 374. 

Advice, on asking and giving, 104. 

^Eschines, of Pericles and Aspasia, 41. 

yEsop, fable of the travelers and the 
chameleon, 379. 

Agassiz, had no time to make money, 139. 

Aikenhead, hanged for free religious 
opinions, 362. 

Alfieri, how he composed, 126. 

Alfred, King of Denmark, story of, 165. 

Alger, public opinion the atmosphere of 
society, 7 ; most men live blindly, 23 ; 
ruins, and what they symbolize, 216 ; 
on the blindness of Homer, Milton, 
Galileo, and Handel, 22S ; on the hap- 
piness of solitude, 342 ; his account of 
the hermit of Grub Street, 343; the 
forest of statues on the roof of Milan 
cathedral, 354;the scholar's pantheon 
at the top of his mind, 354. 

Amyot, his poverty and success, 125. 

Anaxagoras, a request made by, 216; 
whom he believed to be most happy, 
346. 

Andersen, advice to, 14S. 

Anecdote of a singer and his wife in 
Leipsic, 316; of a hypochondriacal 
comedian, 323. 

Angelo, Michel, confesses his ignorance, 
29 ; on reforming mankind, 93 ; anec- 
dote of, 16S ; and Raphael, 171 ; a gem 
once worn on the finger of, 17S; and i 
the Reformation, 252 ; the statues of, j 
303; and Bramante, 303; of Donatel- 
lo's statue, 325 ; a saying of his com- 
mending moderation, 34S. 

Annals of the Parish, why rejected, 148. j 

Anson, Lord, different opinions of, 189. 

Appleseed, Johnny, character and career 
of, 112. 

Apelles and Protogenes, 171. 

Apuleius, a curious fact relating to, 249. 

Arago, his claim for ancient Egypt, 181. 

Arbuthnot, Pope, and Gay, fate of a joint 
play of, 255. 



Archimedes, the tomb of, 215. 

Arctic morality, 102. 

Arctic region, small proportion of fuel 
used in the, 241 ; effect of frost in the, 
301. 

Arethusa, Fountain of, 302. 

Aristotle, on proverbs, 159 ; logic known 
before, 182 ; fate of, 223. 

Arnold, Matthew, moral rules for the 
sage only, 369. 

Artist, an, in serpents, 300. 

Aspasia and Pericles, 41. 

Atterbury, Bishop, what he said of New- 
ton, 107. 

Augereau, at the coronation of Napo- 
leon, no. 

Augustine, St., and the idea of Fourier- 
ism, 182 ; subtleties on the question, 
What then is time ? 339 ; on a happy 
life, 340; a passage from his Confes- 
sions, 354. 

Auld Lang Syne, 204. 

Auld Robin Gray, its authorship a secret 
for fifty years, 254. 

Aurelius, Marcus, tolerant and good to 
all but Christians, 33 ; his idea of free 
government, 185; his doubtful wife 
and bad son, 247 ; what he learnt from 
his tutor, 347 ; a lofty thought of, on 
the sacredness of life, 355. 

Babinet, his opinion of a submarine 
telegraph, 267. 

Bacon, on nature reviving — iEsop's 
damsel, 4S ; of policy and craft, 65. 

Bailly, story told of, 167. 

Balzac, his care in composition, 128. 

Barbauld, Mrs., passage from, 296; lines 
by, 356. 

Barere, views and conduct early and late 
in life, 104. 

Bany, Michael J., some lines by, 120. 

Barton, Bernard, his surprise at a fu- 
neral, 156. 

Bathurst, Lord, and the Essay on Man, 
249. 

Baxter, a believer in witchcraft, 250 ; his 
views at the end of life, 26S ; the re- 
sult, after a trial of worldly things, 326. 

Bayle, on Pericles and Aspasia, 41 ; on 
the spirit of party, 61; on Machia- 
velli's Prince, 233 ; the purity of, 245. 



390 



INDEX. 



Beattie, Dr., of a witty parson, 43. 

Beaumarchais, adaptations of Tarare, 
221. 

Becket, Thomas a, story of the mother 
of, 212. 

Beckford, and his romance, Vathek, 252. 

Bentivoglio, misfortunes of, 262. 

Beranger, refuses a legacy, 141. 

Berkeley, Bishop, on being master of 
one's time, 136. 

Bernis, Cardinal, and Madame de Pom- 
padour, 268. 

Betterton, a borrower from Steele, 169. 

Beyle, Henri, a laborious writer, 125. 

Beza, one of his invectives, 45 ; his 
coarse, amorous poems, 26S. 

Bible, the, in literature, 161 ; a reference 
to, 241. 

Billingsgate, fish-woman of, 28. 

Blackwood's Magazine on diversity, 5 ; 
on the inevitable and irremediable, 91 ; 
on public opinion, 361 ; on the adoring 
principle in human nature, 368. 

Blake, William, artist, genius, mystic, 
madman, 281. 

Blessington, Lady, relating to Moore, 140. 

Boileau, an unwearied corrector, 126 ; 
relating to Moliere, 149. 

Bolingbroke to Swift, 214. 

Books never published, 194. 

Boots with pointed toes believed to be 
the cause of the plague, 203. 

Borghese, Paulo, poverty of, 261. 

Borghese, Princess, anecdote of, 311. 

Bossuet, confesses his insignificance, 30; 
appearance of his manuscript, 129. 

Boswell, and intellectual chemistry, 42 ; 
on being reckoned wise, 168 ; the bul- 
wark of Johnson's fame, 190; John- 
son's pretended contempt of, 243. 

Boyle, effect of falling water upon, 244. 

Brackenridge, distrust of moderation nat- 
ural, 296. 

Brahe, Tycho, and the idiot Lep, 22S ; 
his terror of a hare or fox, 244. 

Brain, insensibility of the, 242. 

Bramah, origin of the idea of his lock, 
181. 

Brewster, Sir David, and the story of 
the falling apple, 175 ; on Galileo's ab- 
juration, 223. 

Bronte, Charlotte, a painstaking writer, 
126 ; life and genius of, 276, 277, 278. 

Brougham, how he composed one of his 
speeches, 132; a curious fact of, 254. 

Brown, John, utterances and incidents 
of, 113; and the old engine-house, 264; 
and the governor of Virginia, 264 ; a 
daughter of, 265 ; one of his trusted 
men, 265. 

Brown, Tom, a remark of, 121. 

Browne, Sir Thomas, on self-love, 14; 
confesses his ignorance, 31 ; on a neg- 
lect of the great, 151 ; on maxims that 
will never be out of date, 159; his faith 
in witchcraft, 224 ; a lofty thought of, 
on the immortality of life, 355 ; on 



usurping the gates of heaven, 366 ; his 
distrust, of his own judgment, 381. 

Bruce, and the story of the spider, 165 ; 
death of, 260. 

Brunei, a remark of, relating to Pom- 
pey's Pillar, 181. 

Brunelleschi, and the story of the egg, 
166. 

Buffon, his manner of composing, 128. 

Biilow, effects of his stopping practice, 
130. 

Bulwer, on truth, 4 ; anecdote of Kean, 
13 ; relating to Calvin and Torque- 
mada, 46 ; his description of a superior 
man, 68 ; on the English language, 
158; on the language of Spain, 15S ; 
on La Rochefoucauld, 234 ; of Des- 
cartes, 238 ; looking from the window 
of his club, 338 ; paraphrase from 
Phagdrus, 374. 

Bunsen, dying exclamation of, 387. 

Bunyan, wrote Pilgrim's Progress in 
prison, 135. 

Burke, no great fire without great heat, 
46; a remark of on idleness, 122; 
how he worried his printer, 132; at 
Beaconsfield, 154; his tribute to John 
Howard, 231 ; his great care as a 
writer, 249 ; his style in youth and old 
age, 254. 

Burnet, Bishop, his estimate of Newton, 
107 ; on Lord Rochester, 236. 

Burns, characterizes woman, 3 ; remarks 
of and by, 123 ; his poverty and pride, 
137; advised to imitate Mrs. John 
Hunter, 145 ; confidence in his own 
powers, 150; tribute of Hawthorne to, 
153; the Scotsman's religion, 174; a 
complaint of himself, 244 ; pronounced 
incapable of music, 263; on sensibil- 
ity, 314 ; his constitutional melancholy, 
315 ; lines by, 344 ; his gospel of char- 
ity. 376. 

Burton, naught so sweet as melancholy, 
naught so damned as melancholy, 314; 
on content and true happiness, 325. 

Butler, misery of, 315. 

Byron, some lines by, 150 ; criticises my- 
thology, 187 ; a peculiarity of, 244. 

Cesar, Augustus, his fear of thunder, 
244. 

Caesar, Julius, the corpse of, 222 ; ambi- 
tion of, criticised by Pascal, 353. 

Cagliostro, Lavater duped by, 258. 

Calamities sometimes blessings, 226. 

Caligula and his horse, 99. 

Caliph, memorial of an illustrious, 333. 

Callcott, his picture of Milton and his 
daughter, 175. 

Calvin, occasional violence of, 45. 

Camoens, poverty of, 134, 261. 

Campbell, his difficulty in finding a 
bookseller, 133 ; Scott and Hohenlin- 
den, 150; and Prof. Wilson, 268. 

Candide's supper at Venice with the six 
kings, 333. 



INDEX. 



391 



Canova exhibiting his paintings, 261. 

Canute, the story of, 166. 

Captain of Virginia militia, exclamation 
of, 119. 

Carlyle, legend of Moses and the Dead 
Sea people, 49 ; on the effects of cus- 
tom, 64; fastidiousness as a writer, 
130; his opinion of a hero, 232; com- 
pares men to sheep, 295. 

Cashmere shawls, 180. 

Castelar, a republican's opinion of Rome, 
307 ; on the unhappiness of life, 337 ; 
pleads for universal toleration, 361. 

Cato, how he was estimated by contem- 
poraries, 144; learned Greek after he 
was seventy, 267. 

Cecil, sorrowed in the bright lustre of a 
court, 334. 

Cervantes, poverty of, 134; planned and 
commenced Don Quixote in prison, 
135 ; a curious fact of, 191 ; his wretch- 
edness and melancholy, 315. 

Chalmers, as to certain of his composi- 
tions, 254 ; and the views of Malthus, 
263. 

Change, anecdotes and facts illustrating, 
9, 10, 11. 

Channing, on establishing a new societv, 
386. 

Chapman, Jonathan, known as Johnny 
Appleseed, 112. 

Charlemagne, a story of the daughter of, 
165. 

Charles I., a story told of, 167. 

Charles II., his criticism of Sir Mat- 
thew Hale, 3 ; touching for the evil, 
224 : and Cromwell, 304 ; and Wycher- 
ley, 304 ; the name given him by one 
who knew him, 304 ; manner of his 
death, 304; character of, drawn by 
Macaulay, 306. 

Charles X'll., of Sweden, anecdote of, 
167. 

Charity, Christian, a story illustrating, 

357- 

Chaulnes, Duke de, and Johnson, 370. 

Chaumette, devoted to an aviary, 99. 

Cheops, ring of, 178. 

Chesterfield, a remark on, 190 ; speeches 
of, written by Johnson, 248. 

Chillingworth, at last confident of noth- 
ing, 258. 

China, scarcity of labor in, 240. 

Chinese rebuke of Christians, 101. 

Chrysippus, of misers, 72. _ 

Cicero, of the*man and his eggs, 6; his 
experience at a watering-place, 16 ; how 
laboriously he prepared his speeches, 
131 ; the diminutive copy of the Iliad 
he saw, 178 ; on universal brotherhood, 
185 ; hunting the tomb of Archimedes, 
215; timidity of, 262. 

Clairvoyance, very old, 183. 

Coal, a man executed for burning it, 
202. 

Cobbe, Frances Power, on the Christian 
movement, 370. 



Cobbett, revisits the scenes of his boy- 
hood, 220. 

Cockburn, Lord, anecdote of Dr. Henry 
80. . 

Coleridge, one just flogging he received, 
21 ; horrified by the exclamation of a 
boy, 22; some devil and some god in 
man, 42 : anecdote of a dignified man, 
69 ; on doing good, 93 ; of traders in 
philanthropy, 97 ; project of pantisoc- 
racy, 102 ; fears he has caught the 
itch, 103; gained little by his writings, 
133 ; what he thought a sufficient in- 
come, 13S ; of Goethe, 147; intellect 
of, 151; comparison of Shakespeare 
with Milton, 152 : on Shakespeare and 
Homer, 152; at York minster, 196; a 
remark of, in one of his lectures, 200; 
and John Chester, 211; curious facts 
relating to, 250; and the House that 
Jack built, 26S ; on certain smells, 302 ; 
his summing up of life, 336 ; remark 
on Home Tooke, 378 ; remark on tol- 
eration, 383. 

Columbus, and the egg, 166; fact relat- 
ing to, 259. 

Commodus, tolerant to Christians, 247. 

Common sense defined, 7. 

Communist, a, defined, 105. 

Conciergerie, flirting and love-making in 
the, 35. 

Confucius, describes the conduct of the 
superior man, 23 ; his joy in frugality, 
136; and the Golden Rule, 185 ; anec- 
dote of, 373. 

Congreve, what the one wise man knew, 
32- 

Conscience, 22. 

Corey, Giles, pressed to death, 60. 

Corneille, his poverty, 134; what Napo- 
leon said of him, 153 ; tiresome in con- 
versation, 260. 

Cornwall, Barry, his fear of the sea, 251. 

Correggio, no portrait of, 262. 

Corwin, Thomas, anecdote of, 168. 

Cottle, Joseph, relating to Coleridge, 22 ; 
of Coleridge at York minster, 196 ; 
lines by, admired by Coleridge, 37S. 

Couthon, devoted to a spaniel, 99. 

Cowley, a curious fact of, 245. 

Cowper, his poems and their publisher, 
192 ; his mental malady, 226 ; the bal- 
lad of John Gilpin, 227; the poor 
schoolmaster, Teedon, 228 ; his at- 
tempt at suicide, 246 ; his giggling with 
Thurlow, 246; the sanest of English 
poets, 254; fancied himself hated by 
his Creator, 259; a melancholy con- 
fession of, 317. 

Crabbe, wrote and burned three novels, 

259- 

Credulity, 20, 224. 

Creed, in the biliary duct, 8 ; referred to 
in the rebuke of a clergyman, 20. 

Crichton, curious achievement of, 264. 

Cromwell, his distrust of popular ap- 
plause, 298 ; and Charles II., 304 ; and 



39 2 



INDEX. 



Milton, 304 ; how estimated when flat- 
tery was mute, 304; manner of his 
death, 304. 

Crowne, John, reading by lightning, 46. 

Cumberland, and Sheridan, 9; describes 
Soame Jenyns, 236 ; Goldsmith and 
his comedy, 270; the dinner at the 
Shakespeare tavern, 271 ; predicament 
of an artist in serpents, 300; a reflec- 
tion on old age, 332 ; on a man gifted 
with worldly qualities, 350; remark on 
Bubb Doddington, 378. 

Curing public evils, 25. 

Curiosity, 17, 32. 

Curran, contest with the fish-woman, 28 ; 
remark to Phillips about his speeches, 
249; melancholy nature of, 314. 

Curtis, George William, castles in Spain, 
327- 

Cushman, Charlotte, anecdote related 
by, 35- 

Custom, doth make cowards of us all, 64. 

Daguerre, his discovery anticipated, 
181. 

Damascus blades of the Crusades, 1S0. 

Dante, a story told of, 170; the prodigal 
and the avaricious together, 302. 

D'Arblay, Madame, and Mrs. Barbauld's 
stanza on Life, 356. 

Darwin, cattle in East Falkland Island, 
10; earthquake at Talcahuano, 17 ; a 
curious fox on the island of San Pe- 
dro, 18; conduct of the Fuegians, 27; 
petrified trees on the Andes, 108 ; con- 
duct of the New Zealand chief. 211 ; 
the three years' drought in Buenos 
Ayres, 222 ; sound and silence in the 
forest of Brazil, 301. 

D'Alembert, declines the favors of roy- 
alty, 141. 

De Coverley, Sir Roger, cause of the 
death of, 373. 

De Foe, rules from the Complete Eng- 
lish Tradesman, 86. 

De l'Isle and the Marseillaise, 205, 248. 

Delia Valle, conduct of the women at 
Goa, 34 ; his own strange conduct, 35. 

Demetrius, and his father, 166 ; a story 
told of, 167. 

Democritus, thought to be a madman, 
144. 

Demosthenes, gloried in the smell of the 
lamp, 131 ; timidity of, 262. 

Denham, curious facts relating to, 235 ; 
anecdote of, 235. 

De Quincey, no thought without blem- 
ish, qo ; his estimate of Goethe, 146 ; 
of Milton, 152. 

Descartes, modesty of, 238. 

De Retz, statement of, 234. 

Desert, painful silence of the, 301. 

De Stael, Madame, criticism of God- 
win, 98 ; and Madame Recamier, 172 ; 
Talleyrand's reply to, 1S7 ; Napoleon's 
hatred of, 253 ; mourns the solitude of 
life, 335- 



De Tocqueville, character of the French, 
40 ; remark of an old lady to, 75 ; story 
told to by Rulhiere, 77 ; on old age, 
333; some wise observations on life, 
34.i • 

Devil, the Reformation and the, 204 ; the 
priest and the, 204. 

Dickens, his care in composition, 128. 

Digby, an illustration from, n. 

Dignity, assumed, described, and satir- 
ized, 67, 68, 69, 70. 

Diminutive writing and printing, 178. 

Diogenes, banished for counterfeiting, 
260. 

Dionysius, story of, 166. 

Disraeli, Isaac, his sketch of Audley, 
73 ; anecdote of, 138 ; on proverbs, 
159; on men of genius, 232. 

Disraeli, Benjamin, on the limits of hu- 
man reason, 62. 

Diversity, 4, 5. 

Doddington, Bubb, characterized by 
Cumberland, 378. 

Doing good, Lamb on, 89 ; difficulty of, 
93 ; remark of Coleridge, 93 ; passages 
from Thoreau, 93. 

Domitian, amused himself catching flies, 
263. 

Drake, and the origin of the Culprit 
Fay, 193. 

Drummond, the sonorous laugher, 271. 

Dryden, criticises the judges of his day, 
3; anecdote relating to, 154; a curious 
fact of, 255. 

Duchatel, his poverty and renown, 125. 

Dunbar, neglect of the poems of, 199. 

Dutch Ambassador and the King of Si- 
am, 101. 

Dyer, George, his experience while ush- 
er, SS ; an associate of Lamb's, 284 ; 
his biography of Robinson, 284 ; his 
absent-mindedness, 2S4 ; anecdotes of, 
2S5, 286. 

Eckermann, describes a scene on the 
Simplon, 350. 

Edwards, Jonathan, effect of his work 
on Original Sin, 56; curious fact re- 
lating to, 266. 

Egypt, hospitals for cats in, 99 ; ventila- 
tion in the pyramids of, 181 ; the rail- 
road dates back to, 181 ; social ques- 
tions discussed to rags in, 181. 

Eldon, Lord, an anecdote he was fond 
of relating, 76 ; a remark in old age, 
104 ; and Bessy Surtees, 246 ; his 
daughter's elopement, 246 ; a curious 
experience of, at Oxford, 246. 

Elizabeth, Queen, a curious fact of, 245. 

Elliot, Sir Gilbert, passion necessary to 
revolution, 46. 

Elliott, the Corn-Law Rhymer, defines 
a communist, 105. 

Eloquence, a rude specimen of, 313. 

Emerson, a man like a bit of Labrador 
spar, 3 ; the soul not twin-born, 5 ; life 
a series of surprises, 24 ; confesses his 



ignorance, 32 ; on the good of evil, 
40 ; few spontaneous actions, 64 ; on 
reforming, 00; is virtue piecemeal ? 93 ; 
of one that would help himself and 
others, 105 ; the martyrdom of John 
Brown, 119; advantages of riches not 
with the heir, 121; personal independ- 
ence, 138; of Shakespeare, 153; of 
the theory and practice of life, 240; 
the plant papyrus, 241 ; relating to Co- 
lumbus, 259; the difference between 
the wise and the unwise, 354 ; effects 
of an acceptance of the sentiment of 
love, 359. 

Epictetus, on forgiving injuries, 185. 

Epicurus, his name a synonym for sensu- 
ality, 261 ; his moderation, 349. 

Erasmus, on self-love, 12 ; two natures in 
Luther, 47 ; of the Colloquies of, 193 ; 
effect of the smell of fish upon, 244; 
and Luther, 308 ; what he said of Lu- 
ther, 309. 

Erskine, a severe corrector, 132. 

Essay on Man, curious statement relat- 
ing to, 24Q. 

Esquirol, effects of occupation, 378. 

Euclid, stereoscope known to, 181. 

Evelyn, observation on Jeffreys, 189 ; 
his argument against solitude, 244. 

Evil, ceremony of touching for the, 224. 

Extremes, law of, 295 ; meeting of in 
morals and legislation, 304. 

Fairy's funeral, description of a, 293. 

Falstaff, dress to represent, 69. 

Faraday, curious fact relating to, 253. 

Farrar, legend of St. Brendan and Judas 
Iscariot, 387 ; of the purification of 
souls, 388._ 

Faustina, wife of Marcus Aurelius, 247. 

Fenelon, and the publication of Telem- 
achus, 193 ; on a violent zeal that we 
must correct, 363 ; anecdotes of, 373. 

Fielding, a curious fact relating to, 191 ; 
and Richardson, 199 ; on our faults, and 
the difficulty of amending them, 338. 

Fittleworth, rector of, how he lost his 
living, 37. 

Fitzherbert and Townshend, 211. 

Flaxman, of the Graces and the Furies, 
10 ; determines the sex of a statue, 
187 ; strange fact of the wife of, 226. 

Foote, how he took off the Dublin prin- 
ter, 78; a story of, 164; a remark on 
the death of, 265. 

Forster, relating to Goldsmith, 156. 

Foster, record of a reflective aged man, 
7; analysis of an atheist, 19; story of 
the devil turned preacher, 43 ; on self- 
idolizing dreamers, 91 ; care in compo- 
sition, 129 ; tribute to John Howard, 
229 ; on a violation of the laws of 
goodness, 240; origin of his essays, 
246. 

Fournier, devoted to a squirrel, 99. 

Fox, fastidious in composition, 126. 

Francis, Sir Philip, and Junius, 257. 



INDEX. 393 



Franklin, Dr., his advice to the three 
sages, 367 ; doubted his own judgment 
as he grew older, 381. 

Frederick the Great, a story told of, 167; 
and Robespierre, 238. 

Frederick William, canes a Jew in a 
street of Berlin, 51. 

Froissart, of a reverend monk, 48. 

Froude, terrible story related by, 57 ; hu- 
man things and icebergs, 109; a reflec- 
tion of, applied to John Brown, 119; 
of fortune and rank, 121 ; prosperity 
consistent with worldliness, 349 ; the 
Scots a happy people, 350.; on putting 
to death for a speculative theological 
opinion, 363 ; how the laity should 
treat the controversial divines, 367. 

Fuller, Margaret, on Goethe, 105 ; few 
great, few able to appreciate greatness, 
143- 

Fuller, Thomas, statement relating to 
Rabelais, 190 ; curious fact relating to 
Wolsey, 224; the Holy Ghost came 
down not in the shape of a vulture, 
359 ; he shall be immortal who liveth 
till he be stoned by one without fault, 
388. 

Fuseli, a habit of in sketching, 2. 

Gainsborough, a remark on painting 
and engraving, 198. 

Galileo, ceremony of abjuration, 223 ; 
blindness of, 228. 

Gait, an observation by, no; Annals of 
the Parish, 148. 

Garrick, variety of his countenance, 10 ; 
a story of his acting, 78 ; the public 
grew tired of admiring him, 297. 

Gaskell, account of the death of a cock- 
fighting squire, 38 ; anecdote of Grim- 
shaw, 55. 

Gay, Pope, and Arbuthnot, fate of a 
joint play of, 255. 

Gems, imitations of, 1 77 ; cabinet of in 
Italy, r 7 S. 

Genius, our obligations to, 161. 

Geoffrin, Madame, and Rulhiere, 170. 

Gertrud bird, 79. 

Giardini, of playing the violin, 130. 

Gibbon, his fastidiousness as a writer, 
125 ; review of the series of Byzantine 
emperors, 219. 

Gladstone, interesting reply of, 263. 

Glass in Pompeii, 177. 

Godwin, Madame de StaeTs criticism of, 
98 ; a good husband and kind father, 
255 ; and Rough, 311. 

Goethe, confesses his ignorance, 29 ; rea- 
son can never be popular, 62 ; anec- 
dote of Merck and the grand duke, Sg ; 
to know how cherries and strawberries 
taste, 90 ; a fortunate mistake of, 92 ; 
nature, 103 ; giving advice, 104 ; aris- 
tocracy and democracy, 104 ; the world 
cannot keep quiet, 109 ; his works com- 
mercially, 133; objections to luxurious 
furniture, 137 ; of Dante's great poem, 



394 



INDEX. 



147 ; advised against writing Faust, 
148 ; genius of Shakespeare, 152 ; in- 
fluence of Voltaire, 153 ; a staff offi- 
cer's opinion of, 155; first impression 
of Switzerland, 195 ; critical remark of, 
198 ; on a peculiarity of Schiller, 244 ; 
disparaged himself as a poet, 261 ; 
pleasant dreams after falling asleep in 
tears, 318 ; compares life to a residence 
at a watering-place, 332 ; the simplicity 
of the world, 347 ; arrogance natural 
to youth, 352 ; remark of at the age 
of seventy-five, 355 ; truth and error, 
361 ; of a Christianity of feeling and 
action, 366. 
Goldsmith, of the vanity of human judg- 
ment, 24 ; ten years composing the 
Traveller, 129; to Bob Bryanton, 135; 

Jroud reply to Hawkins, 139 : reply to 
)r. Scott, 139 ; criticises Waller, Pope, 
and Milton, 145; opinion of Tristram 
Shandy, 147 ; his street ballads, 156 ; a 
saying of credited to Talleyrand, 172 ; 
relations with Bott, the barrister, 200 ; 
friendship and jealousy, 240 ; as a talk- 
er and as a writer, 244; Goody Two 
Shoes, 26S; at the British Coffee 
House, 270 ; first acting of She Stoops 
to Conquer, 270; conduct during, 271. 

Goodness tainted, 94. 

Gordianus, epitaph of, 263. 

Grammont, Count, on Sir John Den- 
ham, 235. 

Gray, twenty years touching up his Ele- 
gy, 126 ; criticises Thomson and Aken- 
side, 145 ; diffidence and fastidiousness 
of, 238 ; his Elegy not intended for the 
public, 258. 

Greene, Peele, and Marlowe, 249. 

Grimaldi, devouring melancholy of, 315. 

Groenvelt, Dr., persecution of, 201. 

Guerin, Eugenie de, her story of the 
poor shepherdess, 345. 

Guerin, Maurice de, on a solitary life, 

34 2 - . _ 

Guido, and the portrait of Beatrice Cen- 

cj, 3i3- 
Guizot, declines a title, 141. 

Hadrian's villa, 217. 

Hale, Sir Matthew, criticised by Charles 
II-, 3; unpublished writings of, 194; 
trials before for witchcraft, 224 ; influ- 
enced by Jeffreys, 247. 

Hall, Robert, sought relief in Dante, 
267. 

Hallam, his opinion of Hooker, 225. 

Hammond, Elton, 278. 

Handel, blindness of, 228 ; his hallelu- 
jahs open the heavens, 229. 

Harrington, imprisonment of, 135 ; man 
a religious creature, 368. 

Harvey, effects of his discovery, 147, 
301. 

Hawthorne, on men who surrender 
themselves to an overruling power, 
97 ; on special reformers, 98 ; distinc- 



tion between a philanthropic man and 
a philanthropist, 113 ; Byron and 
Burns, 153 ; of the Scarlet Letter, 188 ; 
statement relating to the Mayflower, 
241 ; of artists who have painted their 
own portraits, 377. 
Haydn, a story told of, 175. 
Hay ward, passages from, 164, 165, 174. 
Hazlitt, his violence at times, 36 ; legend 
of a Brahman turned into a monkey, 
48 ; of two pictures by Northcote, 190 ; 
of Coleridge and John Chester, 211; 
the poet Gray, 238 ; every man an ex 
ception, 240 ; strange facts about, 263 ; 
opinion of Mary Lamb, 267 ; of Gar- 
rick, 297 ; wanting one thing, he want- 
ed everything, 325 ; on aiming at too 
much, 337 ; on keeping in our own 
walk in life, 347 ; life, at the beginning 
and the end, 352. 
Heart, insensibility of the, 242. 
Heine, pleads for the negro king, 27 ; 
of Luther, 47 ; when he would forgive 
his enemies, 53 ; tribute to Goethe, 
153 ; ignorance of doctors, 20S ; of the 
leper-poet, 318 ; a paralytic, 320 ; fame 
nauseous to, 331. 
Helps, Arthur, the nature of man, 33; 
you never know enough about a man 
to condemn him, 39 ; the art of life, 
341 ; dialogue on toleration and char- 
ity, 383. 
Helvetius, of the passions, 46 ; advice to 

Montesquieu, 148. 
Henderson, faculty of getting words by 

heart, 125. 
Henry VI. of France, a story of, 171. 
Henry, Patrick, his last speech, 264. 
Hercules, a diminutive figure of, 178. 
Herder, advice to Goethe, 148. 
Herrick, a painstaking elaborator, 129. 
Hiero, questions Simonides, 31, 348. 
Hildebrand, Pope, fate of, 223. 
Hill, Dr., and Hannah Glass, 268. 
Hillard, on Hadrian's villa, 217. 
History and fiction, 164. 
Hogarth, relating to the sale of certain 
pictures, 192 ; his estimate of Reynolds, 
198 ; impressions as to his true voca- 
tion, 258. 
Hogg, his neighbors thought him no 

poet, 145. 
Holbein, German engraving in the man- 
ner of, 326. 
Hood, origin of the Song of the Shirt, 
149; what delighted him, 155 ; a victim 
of distress and melancholy, 321 ; anec- 
dotes of, 321 ; lines on his dead child, 
322 ; passages from letters to little chil- 
dren, 322, 323. 
Hook, attempt of Southey to hoax, 200. 
Hooker, circumstances of his marriage, 
224; character of, by Izaak Walton, 
225. 
Home, Sweet Home, 205. 
Homer, called a plagiarist, 144 ; effect of 
his character and genius, 162. 



INDEX. 



395 



Horace, a laborious writer, 125 ; passage 

from. 302. 
Howard, John, humanity of, 229; and 

solitary confinement, 260. 
Howe, John, his method of conducting 

public fasts, 37. 
Huber, Francois, blindness of, 259. 
Human things compared to icebergs, 

109. 
Humboldt, credits the Chinese with mag- 
netic carriages, 181. 
Hume, his care in composition, 126; his 

history slow of sale at first, 133 ; advice 

to Robertson, 148. 
Humility illustrated by the rain-drop, 

344- 
Hunt, Leigh, tribute to Handel, 228 ; on 

pseudo-Christianity, 364 ; remark on 

Lamb, 383. 
Hyacinthe, the church of the future, 

366. 
Hypocrite, profession of, 71. 

Ice, curious facts relating to, 210. 
Iceland, the best building in, 241. 
Icicles, formation of, 209. 
Ideas, the few great, remain about the 

same, 157. 
Ignorance, 17, 18, 19, 20, 27, 28, 29, 30, 

31,32,240,352. 
Incledon, stories of Garrick and Foote, 

77/ 

Indian cazique, story of, 101. 

Intellectual chemistry, 42. 

Invective, a primitive Quaker's, 44. 

Ireland, baptisms in, 37. 

Irving, on the habit of criticising govern- 
ment, 25 ; small returns from his writ- 
ings, 133 ; an observation on Gold- 
smith, 187 ; modesty and diffidence of, 
239 ; called a vagabond by a neighbor, 
239; stealing his own apples, 239; of 
elaborating humor, 316; circumstances 
under which he composed the History 
of New York, 319. 

Isocrates, timidity of, 262. 

Jameson, Mrs., a story related by, 172. 

Java, flowers, fruits, and trees of, 301. 

Jeffreys, portrait and conduct of, 1S9; 
influence over Sir Matthew Hale, 247. 

Jenner, persecution of, 202. 

Jenyns, described by Cumberland, 236. 

Jerome, St., legend of St. John recorded 
by, 359- 

Jerrold, Douglas, his dislike of the thea- 
tre behind the scenes, 1 ; of the prac- 
tical benevolence of a London trades- 
man, 81 ; ambitious to write a treatise 
on philosophy, 261 ; the Caudle Lect- 
ures, 316. 

Jews, curious persecution of the, 203. 

Joan of Arc, Shakespeare's and Schiller's, 
174. 

Johnson, reply to Boswell as to the in- 
decency of a statue, 1 ; his opinion of 
remarks by Orrery and Delany on 



Swift, 2; his hatred of baby-talk, 50; 
a remark on marriage, 62 ; opinion of 
feeling people, 98 ; opinion of levelers, 
105 ; Life of, at first slow of sale, 133 ; 
Cumberland on, 142 ; how he was once 
made happy, 143 : opinion of Milton's 
sonnets, 146 ; criticises Swift, Gray, 
and Sterne, 146; opinion of Lycidas, 
147; a neglect of the great, 151; of 
Shakespeare, 152 ; Dr. Campbell's esti- 
mate of, 153 ; remark to Mrs. Macau- 
lay, 168 ; version of Pope's Messiah, 
176 ; reviewer's remark on, 190 ; paint- 
er's confession to, 199 ; of Demos- 
thenes Taylor, 212 ; tribute to Savage, 
236 ; poverty and companionships of, 
243 ; belief in ghosts, 243 ; a peculiarity 
of, 244; a famous speech of Pitt. 24S; 
speeches of Chesterfield, 2^6 ; collected 
sermons, 248 ; a number of the Ram- 
bler, 248 ; Ramblers written rapidly, 
248; confidence in Psalmanazar, 250; 
bigotry of, 257; learned Dutch after 
he was seventy, 267 ; first acting of 
Goldsmith's comedy, 270 ; melancholy 
of, 316 ; of Pope and his writings, 317 ; 
of Young and his writings, 317; of the 
Christian religion. 370. 

Jones, Paul, and Thomson's Seasons, 
261. 

Joubert, a thought of, 1 ; his habit as a 
writer, 127. 

Journalism, impersonal, 241. 

Judkins, Juke, reminiscences of, 81. 

Junius, warns the king, 298. 

Jupiter and Cupid, 296 ; imaginary proc- 
lamation by, 374. 

Kane, Dr., curious experience with the 
Esquimaux, 102 ; of frost in the Arc- 
tic region, 301. 

Kant, a curious fact of, 251. 

Kean, Edmund, wretchedness of his 
early life, 124; how he studied and 
slaved, 131. 

Kemble, John, reply to Northcote, 15 ; 
as to his new readings of Hamlet, 131. 

Kempis, Thomas a, of simplicity and 
purity, 345 ; of charity and humility, 
372 ; of amending our own faults, 374. 

King, Dr., on toleration, 383. 

Kinglake, care in the composition of 
Eothen, 128. 

Kingsley, Charles, of his father, 151. 

Kneller, Sir Godfrey, remark to a sitter, 
13- 

Knives and forks, ridiculed by Ben Jon- 
son and Beaumont and Fletcher, 202. 

Knowledge reserved, 240. 

Kotzebue, relating to, 257. 

Labor, life's blessing, 121. 

La Bruyere, of judging men, 2 ; of diver- 
sity, 6 ; some thoughts of, 24 ; on the 
mixture of good and evil, 73 ; eloquent 
passage of, 2 19. 

La Fontaine, always copying and recopy- 



396 



INDEX. 



ing, 126 ; dull and stupid in conversa- 
tion, 260. 

Lais, the courtezan, saying of, 41. 

Lamartine, a strange statement relating 
to, 256. 

Lamb, remark on covetousness, 73 ; dis- 
section of meanness, 81 ; anecdote of 
George Dyer, 88 ; doing good by 
stealth, 89; story of an India-house 
clerk, 100; care in composition, 127; 
anecdote of, 134; criticises Faust, 146 ; 
tribute to Manning, 150 ; essay on the 
Origin of Roast Pig, 169 ; could spit 
upon Howard's statue, 260 ; first acting 
of Mr. H., 272 ; hopeful letter to 
Manning, 273 ; hisses his own bant- 
ling, 274 ; another letter to Manning, 
not so hopeful, 275 ; poor Elia, 275 ; 
constitutional melancholy of, 316. 

Lamb, Mary, Hazlitt's estimate of, 267. 

Landor, eyes of critics on one side, 4 ; of 
Shakespeare and Milton, 152 ; of Crom- 
well and Milton, 152 ; of the estimation 
of the great by their contemporaries, 
153 ; of Swift, Addison, Rabelais, La 
Fontaine and Pascal, 315; of Aspasia 
and Pericles, 347 ; the falsehood of life, 
364; of looking down on ourselves, 372. 

Lansdowne, phrenologist's judgment of, 
188. 

Lardner, curious facts of, 266. 

La Rochefoucauld, his Maxims criticised 
by Sterling, 2 ; reference to his Max- 
ims, 12; care in composition, 129; an 
unselfish, brave, humane man, 234. 

Last Rose of Summer, 204. 

Latimer, Tenterden-Steeple and Good- 
win Sands, 18. 

Laud, cruelty of, 363. 

Lavater, judgment of Lord Anson, 189; 
duped by Cagliostro, 258. 

Lay, Benjamin, an enthusiast, anecdote 
of, 367. 

Layard, nature breaking out in a party 
of Arabs, 4S ; engravings on Nineveh, 
178; lens found in Nineveh, 181 ; tra- 
dition of Nimrod and the gnat, 302. 

Lecky, witchcraft in England, 56; opin- 
ion of Hooker, 225; great and multi- 
form influences of Christian philan- 
thropy, 372. 

Legends and parables : a Brahman turned 
into a monkey, 49; Moses and the 
dwellers by the Dead Sea, 49 ; the red- 
breast, and how it was singed, 55 ; the 
man in the moon, 79 ; man and woman 
in the moon, 79 ; Gertrud bird, the 
woodpecker, 79; the Wandering Jew, 
80; the Brahman and the three rogues, 
296 ; Og, a king of Bashan, 298 ; Nim- 
rod and the gnat, 302 ; Gabriel and the 
idol-worshiper, 346 ; St. John in the 
arms of his disciples, 359 ; blind men 
and the elephant, 379; St. Brendan 
and Judas Iscariot, 387 ; Abraham 
and the old man v. ho worshiped the 
fire only, 388. 



Leighton, a clergyman, persecution of, 

363- 
Le Notre and Louis XIV., 167. 
Le Sage, poverty of, 134. 
Leslie, anecdote of Owen and Wilber- 

force, 92. 
Lessing, the restless instinct for truth, 

32. 
Levelers, remark of Johnson on, 105. 
Life, every year of a wise man's, 8; a 

series of surprises, 24 ; knowledge of, 

353 ! beginning and end of, 353 ; stanza 

on, 356. 
Lilli Burlero, ballad of, 204. 
Lilliput, the mighty emperor of, 28. 
Lincoln, his dislike of being preached to, 

94 ; how he earned his fiist dollar, 122 ; 

idea the slaves had of him, 314; the 

reason he gave for not uniting himself 

to any church, 386. 
Linnaeus, curious facts relating to, 235. 
Liston, a confirmed hypochondriac, 315. 
Livingstone, exclamation of Sekwebu at 

seeing the sea, 19 ; tribe of good Afri- 
cans, 102. 
Livy, on curing public evils, 26. 
Llandaff, Bishop of, anecdote of, 121. 
Lloyd, his remedy for madness, 267. 
Locke, of the king of Siam, 10 1. 
Lockhart, wrote the first of the Noctes 

papers, 255. 
Longfellow, lines from Hiawatha, 299. 
Lovelace and Suckling, 266. 
Lowell, definition of common sense, 7 ; 

Montaigne and Shakespeare, 12 ; 

witchcraft, 61. 
Lucian, a pretty passage in one of his 

dialogues, 296. 
Lucretius, his one poem, 125. 
Luther, a violent saint sometimes, 45 ; 

what Heine said of him, 47; what he 

said of himself, 47 ; and the devil, 204 ; 

believed in ghosts, 243 ; relations with 

Erasmus, 30S; opinion of Erasmus, 309; 

with Melancthon in the pulpit, 310. 

Mabillon, a genius by an accident, 226. 

Macaulay, conduct of a nephew of, 25; 
a laborious writer, 129; Machiavelli, 
233 ; Byron, 298 ; times of Cromwell 
and Charles II., 304, 305, 306 ; ethics 
of Charles II. ; hanging of Aikenhead, 
362. 

Machiavelli, of judging by appearances, 
71 ; a zealous republican, 233 ; curious 
facts relating to, 233. 

Mackenzie, Henry, his advice to Burns, 
145 ; a hard-headed, practical man, 255. 

Mackenzie, Sir George, an advocate of 
solitude, 244. 

Mahagam, ruins of, 222. 

Mahomet, turns a misfortune to advant- 
age, 66. 

Maintenon, Madame de, to her niece, 
336. 

Maistre, Xavier de, on self-love, 12 ; of 
people fancying themselves ill, 76. 



INDEX. 



397 



Malherbe, how he composed 126; anec- 
dotes of, 126. 

Mallet, a curious fact relating to, 256. 

Man, like a certain statue, 2; like a bit 
of Labrador spar, 3 ; a noble animal, 
3 ; his own chiefest flatterer, 13; most 
apt to believe what he least under- 
stands, 17; lives blindly, 23; tries to 
pass for more than he is, 27 ; a terrible 
Voltaic pile, 33 ; some devil and some 
God in him, 42 ; who succeeds, 46 ; 
a curious object for microscopic study, 
63; a natural reformer, 90; persuada- 
bility of, 103 ; when he is powerful, 
105 ; the fittest place where he can 
die, 120; when he becomes conscious 
of a higher self, 355; naturally relig- 
ious, 368. 

Mandeville, an observation by, 346. 

Man-mending, mania of, 103. 

Marat, kept doves, 99. 

Marlborough, avarice of, 264 ; meanness 
of, 264. 

Marlowe, Peele, and Greene, 249. 

Marseillaise, origin of the, 205. 

Marvell, pride and independence of, 139. 

Mather, Cotton, epithets he applied to 
the Quakers, 44; account of the trial 
of Mary Johnson for withcraft, 58 ; 
the panic he created in New England, 
60. 

Mathews, curious anecdote by, 207. 

Mayflower, a slave-ship, 241. 

Meanness, a study and an analysis of, 
81. 

Medhurst, Chinese opinions of Christians 
reported by, 101. 

Melancthon, approved of the burning of 
Servetus, 258 ; with Luther in the pul- 
pit, 310. _ t 

Melmoth, on thinking authors, 158. 

Menander, proverb from, quoted by St. 
Paul, 160. 

Mencius, on the disease of men, 95. 

Merck, and the Grand Duke, 89. 

Mercury and Jove, 92. 

Mesmerism, very old, 183. 

Meyer, curious fact related by, 302. 

Michelet, his horror of the sea, 252. 

Middleton, stories of Cicero, 16, 215. 

Migne, Abbe, curious cruelties referred 
to by, 99. 

Milan cathedral, 196. 

Mill, curious omission of, 266. 

Miller, strange fact relating to, 267. 

Mills of God, 107. 

Milton, his care in composition, 126; and 
Paradise Lost, 147 ; De Quincey's es- 
timate of, 152 ; of lyric and epic poets, 
348- 

Mirabeau, ugliness and attractiveness of, 
259 ; his distrust of popular applause, 
297. 

Miser, characterized by Colton, 72; a 
saying of Foote, 72 ; effect of his hoard- 
ing habits illustrated, 73 ; an observa- 
tion of Lamb, 73. 



Misfortunes never come singly, 299. 

Moliere, on the profession of hypocrite, 
71 ; his slowness as a writer, 127 ; used 
one of his servants as critic, 149 ; a 
grave and silent man, 316. 

Money-getter analyzed, 71, 72. 

Monod, of the conduct of certain mis- 
sionaries, 56. 

Montagu, Basil, prejudice, the spider of 
the mind, 376. 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, of the 
Duchess of Marlborough, 34 ; her crit- 
icism of women, 34 ; obloquy she en- 
dured, 201. 

Montaigne, difference in opinions, 5 ; of 
laws and events, 6; action of seeing 
outward, 12 ; a pattern within our- 
selves, 22 ; the virtue of the soul, 23 ; 
curing public evils, 25 ; conduct of 
lecturers in the courts of philosophy, 
41 ; nature starting up, 47 ; how esti- 
mated by his neighbors, 154; faith in 
physicians, 208 ; the fairest lives, in his 
opinion, 346 ; the thoughts and actions 
of man, 375 ; on distrusting our own 
judgments, 382. 

Montespan, Madame de, to Madame de 
Maintenon, 34; rigorous devotion of, 
268. 

Montesquieu, a laborious writer, 125. 

Moore, the lady and the second volume 
of the Life of Byron, by, 54; seventy 
lines a week's work for, 12S ; pride and 
independence of, 140 ; story of the 
jeweled lady, 165 ; trick of Father 
Prout at the expense of, 176; of Scott 
and Waverley, 191 ; and the opera of 
Tarare, 221; and Lalla Rookh, 251; 
of the authorship of the Junius let- 
ters, 257 ; statement relating to Sheri- 
dan, 267. 

More, Hannah, her opinion of Milton's 
sonnets, 146. 

More, Sir Thomas, a fierce persecutor, 
245- 

Morris, Robert, imprisoned for debt, 256. 

Mosheim, a sentence from an old album, 
347- 

Mother Goose's Melodies, 206. 

Motley, effects of the gout of Charles 
V., 8 ; Luther when angry, 47 ; Rad- 
bod and Bishop Wolf ran, 100 ; the 
Netherlands, 107 ; long live the beg- 
gars ! 1 10 ; Erasmus and Luther, 308. 

Mozart, declaration of, 30 ; his estimate 
of Handel, 228. 

Midler, Max, of children's fables, 160; 
when a man becomes conscious of a 
higher self, 355 ; of Christianity, 370. 

Nanac, the holy, and the Moslem priest, 
368. 

Napoleon, what he said of Corneille, 
153; a thing that puzzled him, 170; 
and Madame de Stael, 253 ; his fond- 
ness for Ossian, 261 ; remark to Bour- 
rienne, 297. 



39§ 



INDEX. 



Nature, goes her own way, 103. 

Neander, and Plutarch's Pedagogue, 
265. 

Nero, sensitive to poetry and music, 33. 

Netherlands, the, Motley's description 
of, 107. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, confesses his igno- 
rance, 30 ; his character illustrated, 105, 
106, 107 ; neglected as a lecturer, 133 5 
the story of the falling apple, 176; a 
poor accountant, 263 ; as a poet, 264. 

Newton, John, to the woman in prison, 

55- 

Nicholls, a sensual clergyman, 43. 

Nimrod and the gnat, 302. 

Nollekens and the widow, 9. 

Norris, John, self-love, 13 ; our passions, 
47. 

Northcote, and the pedantic coxcomb, 
1 ; blaming himself to Kemble, 15; of 
two of his pictures, 190 ; of the con- 
ceited painter in the Sistine Chapel, 
197. 

Olaf's mode of converting Eyvind, 52. 

Old Hundred, 204. 

Old Oaken Bucket, 248. 

Opinions, no two alike, 5 ; human, the 
history of, 7 ; bundles of contradic- 
tions, 8 ; of the same men at different 
times, 8. 

Orrery, Lord, story of Swift, 170. 

Owen, Robert, reply to Wilberforce, on 
putting off the happiness of mankind, 
92. 

Oyster-eating, first act of, 169. 

Paley, what he thought of Tristram 
Shandy, 147. 

Palgrave, anecdotes of Abd-el-Lateef, 
383. 

Panis, devoted to pheasants, 99. 

Pantisocracy, Coleridge's Utopia, 102. 

Paracelsus, persecution of, 201. 

Paradise and Paris, 308. 

Paradise Lost, slow sale of, 133. 

Park, Mungo, and the sable chief, 27. 

Pascal, of vanity, 13 ; on our love of 
wearing disguises, 66 ; maxims of con- 
duct, 159; twenty days perfecting one 
letter, 126 ; vanity of the world, 240 ; 
Solomon and Job on human misery, 
337 ; the present never the mark of 
our designs, 339 ; a great advantage of 
rank, 353; remark on the ambition of 
Caesar, 353 ; the two extremities of 
knowledge, 354 ; maxims and first prin- 
ciples subject to revolution, 360; the 
choice of a profession, 377. 

Paul, St., effects of his preaching at Eph- 
esus, 362. 

Paul, Jean, a curious fact about sheep, 
296 ; his comic romance, Nicholas 
Margraf, 3i8._ 

Paul and Virginia, pronounced a fail- 
ure, 148 ; origin of an English transla- 
tion of, 248. 



Payne, and Home, Sweet Home, 205. 
Peele, Greene, and Marlowe, 249. 
Penn, a curious statement relating to, 

2 57- 

Pepys, his opinion of Hudibras, 146; 
the poor widow in Holland, 325. 

Pericles and Aspasia, 41. 

Persian, passage from the, 344. 

Persius, chastity and modesty of, 261. 

Peruvian bark, an invention of the devil, 
201. 

Peterborough, of F^nelon, 373. 

Petrarch, his sonnets, 190 ; despised 
Dante, 199 ; a curious fact of, 253 ; 
an exclamation of, 355. 

Petrified trees in the Andes, 10S. 

Phasdrus, apologue of the two sacks, 374. 

Phidias, his reported service to Pericles, 
41 ; his sitting statue of Jupiter, 261. 

Philanthropic man, a, not a philanthro- 
pist, 113. 

Philanthropists, malicious, anecdotes of, 
96, 97. 

Philanthropy, traders in, wrong in head 
or heart, 97. 

Philip III. and Don Quixote, 314. 

Phillips, Wendell, on borrowing in liter- 
ature, 162 ; on the lost arts, 177 ; curi- 
ous statements relating to, 237. 

Philosophy, molecular, 6. 

Pitt, authorship of a famous speech of, 
248. 

Plague, curious superstitions as to the 
cause of the, 203. 

Plato, evidence of great care in the com- 
position of his Republic, 125; accused 
of envy, lying, etc., 144; timidity of, 
262. _ 

Playfair, a strange fact of, 258. 

Plays of the stage and of literature, 207. 

Pliny, opinion of the Christian religion, 
266 ; questions nature, 337 ; a custom 
of the Thracians, 339. 

Plutarch, of self-love, 13 ; without a bio- 
graphy, 262 ; strange omission of, 265 ; 
learned Latin after he was seventy, 
267; on the universality of religion, 
368. 

Poe, of God and the soul, 32 ; and the 
Swedenborgians, 188; the grand duke 
of Weimar's criticism of the Raven, 
317 ; lines by, 329 ; what he thought a 
strong argument for the religion of 
Christ, 359. 

Pompadour, Madame de, and Cardinal 
Bernis, 26S ; her life an improbable 
romance, 336. 

Pompey, career and end of, 222. 

Pontifical army, soldiers of the, 241. 

Pope, of every year of a wise man's life, 
8 ; opinion of Newton, 107 ; an un- 
wearied corrector, 126 ; tradition of 
at Twickenham, 154; anecdote of, 168; 
Johnson's Latin version of his Mes- 
siah, 176; and Gay and Arbuthnot, 
fate of a joint play of, 255 ; timidity 
of, 262. 



INDEX. 



399 



Poussin, reply to a person of rank, 121 ; 
story told of, 175; reply to Cardinal 
Mancini, 349. 

Poverty, fine horror of, 73 ; and parts, 
121 ; necessary to success 121; amus- 
ing evidence of, 124. 

Prayer, the, said to have been in use by 
the Jews for four thousand years, 185. 

Preaching, remarks of Thoreau on, 94; 
Lincoln's horror of being preached to, 
94 ; virtue takes no pupils, 95. 

Presbyterian Holdenough and Episco- 
palian Rochecliffe, 366. 

Prescott, of the Aztec priests, 33 ; a state 
ment of, 240. 

Procter, of Lamb's tragedy, 272. 

Protogenes, and Apelles, 171. 

Prout, Father, and Moore, 176. 

Psalmanazar and Johnson, 250. 

Public opinion, 71, 361. 

Publius Syrus, sayings of, 48, 158, 226. 

Puritanism in New England, 36. 

Pyramids, story of the erection of one 
of them, 253. 

Pythagoras, a curious statement relating 
to, 250. 

Rabelais, a strange fact relating to, 
190 ; knew Rome, 308. 

Racine and Louis XIV., 134. 

Radbod, at the baptismal font, 100 ; de- 
clines the Christian's heaven, 10a. 

Radcliffe, Mrs., an interesting fact of, 
255- 

Railroads and ram, 209. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 135. 

Randolph, John, his first public speech, 
264. 

Raphael, story of and Michel Angelo, 
171; his Transfiguration, 197. 

Rawlinson, the stone he brought from 
Nineveh, 179. 

Recamier, Madame, and Madame de 
Stael, 172 ; sits and muses on the shore 
of the ocean, 336. 

Reformers, stories of, 96, 97. 

Reign of Terror, incident during the, 
40. _ 

Religion, a subject proscribed in general 
societv, 242 ; if charity were made the 
principle of it instead of faith, 357 ; 
two religions, the religion of amity 
and the religion of enmity, 365. 

Renous and his caterpillars, 267. 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, story related of, 
174; his colors fading, 179; inquires 
in the Vatican for the works of Raph- 
ael, 197 ; critical remark of, 197 ; and 
Hogarth, 197 ; his portrait of Bott, 
alongside of Goldsmith, 200. 

Richard Cceur de Lion and Saladin, 180. 

Richardson, man's resemblance to a stat- 
ue made to stand against a wall, 2. 

Right, too rigid, hardens into wrong, 
96. 

Robertson, F. W., from his sermon on 
the Tongue, 365. 



Robertson, advised against writing his 
history of Charles V, 148. 

Robespierre, defends Franklin's light- 
ning-rods, 203 ; and Frederick, 238 ; 
what was found in his desk, 256 ; Ma- 
dame Roland to, 298. 

Robinson, Henry Crabb, his partiality 
for the Cook of Revelation, 20 ; how 
he reconciled himself to his ignorance, 
29; rebuke of spiritual pride, 52; the 
Mahometan's heaven and the Chris- 
tian's hell, 55 ; his opinion of Edwards' 
Original Sin, 56; Jeffrey's portrait, 
189 ; at the Fountain of Arethusa, 302. 

Robinson, Robert, remark of relating to 
the Trinity, 20; Dyer's biography of, 
284. 

Rochester, Lord, the last year of the life 
of, 236. 

Rodgers, Judge, the dying Scotsman's 
tribute to Burns, 174. 

Rogers, his care in composition, 129; 
his proposition to Wordsworth, 137; 
remark on Sydney Smith, 151 ; anec- 
dote of relating to Dryden, 154 ; amus- 
ing incident of, 155; pretty story of a 
little girl, 359. 

Koland, Madame, to Robespierre, 298. 

Rollo, Duke of Normandy, story told of, 
165. 

Roman emperor, curious use of the mar- 
ble head of a, 302. 

Romanianus, with only a name, 262. 

Rome, a bitter republican's opinion of, 
307- 

Rosch, on effects of occupation on the 
mind, 378. 

Rough and Godwin, 311. 

Rousseau, a saying of, 103 ; and Voltaire, 
198 ; cause of his cynicism, 245 ; a 
painstaking writer, 248 ; fancied him- 
self the object of all men's hatred, 
259 ; his preaching and his practice, 
268. 

Rubens, a complaint of, 30. 

Rulhiere, story of a Russian friend of, 
77; and Madame Geoffrin, 170; guilty 
of only one wickedness, 375. 

Ruskin to his students, 179. 

Russell, Lord John, his definition of a 
proverb, 159. 

Rutherford, Samuel, and Archbishop 
Usher, 357. 

Saadi, the traveler and the bag of pearls, 
122 ; description of a drink, 184 ; verse 
of the elephant-driver, 372; reply of 
the piece of scented clay, 373 ; Abra- 
ham and the old man who worshiped 
the fire only, 387. 

Sachs, of earth and heaven, 325. 

Sainte-Beuve, fastidiousness as a writer, 
126. 

Saint Simon, story of two sisters, 34; 
of the dying duchess, 75. 

Saladin and Richard Coeur de Lion, 180. 

Sanson, the hereditary executioner, 259. 



400 



INDEX. 



Saunn, advice to Montesquieu, 148. 

Savage, corrects a lady's judgment of 
Thomson, 188; tribute of Johnson to, 
236 ; with Johnson all night in London 
streets, 243. 

Saxe, Marshal, his terror of a cat, 244. 

Scaliger, his opinion of Montaigne, 147 ; 
a peculiarity of, 244 ; difficulty in com- 
municating his knowledge, 25S. 

Scaramouche, snuff of a thousand flow- 
ers, 300. 

Scargill, of the English, Scotch and 
Irish, 302. 

Scarron, wretchedness of, 320. 

Schedone, of a painting by, 326. 

Schiller, Indian Death Song, 147; Joan 
of Arc, Don Carlos, and Tell, 174 ; the 
scent of rotten apples a necessity to, 

244 ; a curious fact relating to, 251. 
Scott, story of a placid minister near 

Dundee, 50 ; how estimated by his 
neighbors, 144; failure of Waverley 
predicted, 148; Campbell and Hohen- 
linden, 150; Burns and the mouse, 150; 
meeting of Richard and Saladin, 180; 
how he discovered his talents, 191 ; the 
authorship of Old Mortality, 201 ; nev- 
er saw Melrose Abbey by moonlight, 
251; remarkable industry of, 266; a 
sad bit of self- portraiture, 317; a 
strange fact relating to the Bride of 
Lammermoor, 318. 

Scott, General, a sculptor's story of, 173. 

Seeing, limits to, 12; action of seeing 
outward, 12. 

Selden, a remark on marriage, 240. 

Selwyn, his reply on being charged with 
a want of feeling, 53 ; of vices becom- 
ing necessities, 65. 

Seneca, an usurer with seven millions, 

245 ; a maxim of, 349. 
Shakespeare, Johnson's tribute to, 152. 
Sharpe, on the difficulty of doing good, 

22. 
Shelley, sighs to Leigh Hunt, 357. 
Shenstone, splendid misery of, 246. 
Sheridan, sarcasm upon Cumberland, 8 ; 

fastidiousness as a writer, 127 ; how he 

elaborated his wit, 129; a curious fact 

of, 267. 
Sherlock, consolation for the shortness of 

life, 332. 
Siddons, Mrs., confesses her ignorance, 

.3°- 

Sidney, Algernon, remark of Evelyn re- 
lating to, 189. 

Silenus, of Jove and Mercury, 92. 

Simonides, replies to Hiero, 31, 348; fa- 
ble of the crab and the snake, 364. 

Small-pox, goddess of, worshiped and 
burned in China, 36. 

Smith, Adam, a laborious writer, 129. 

Smith, Sydney, how he was cured of 
shyness, 15 ; his objection to Scotch 
philosophers, 93 ; advice to the Bishop 
of New Zealand, 99; the Suckling 
Act, 103 ; remark to his brother, 169 ; a 



phrenologist pronounces him a great 
naturalist, 188 ; authorship of the 
Plymley Letters, 201 ; resorted to 
Dante for solace, 267 ; on getting hu- 
man beings together who ought to be 
together, 341. 

Smollett and his dependents, 199; pri- 
vate character of, 245. 

Socrates, reply to Menon, 6 ; the hardest 
of all trades, 25 ; called illiterate, 144 ; 
to his judges, 174; idolatry of, 243; 
timidity of, 262 ; a poor accountant, 
263; learned music after he was sev- 
enty, 267 ; enlargement of a thought 
of, 374- 

Solomon, there is no new thing, 186; his 
wicked son, 247 ; what he said of 
laughter, 314. 

Somerset, duke of, 69. 

Sophocles, considered a lunatic, 144. 

Soul, purification of the, illustrated by 
the old coin, 388. 

Southey, story of Vergara and the sev- 
enth commandment, 17; to Cottle of 
the meanness of an Englishman at 
Lisbon, SS ; not ashamed of his radical- 
ism, 104 ; declines the editorship of 
the Times, 141 ; unknown to his 
neighbors, 145 ; on certain famous lit- 
erary works, 199 ; attempt to hoax 
Hook, 200. 

Souvestre, virtue takes no pupils, 95 ; 
philosophizes on the carnival, 299 ; the 
small dwelling joy can live in, 348; 
awards the palm to moderation, 348 ; 
rest in an eternal childhood, 353. 

Spencer, the religion of amity and the 
religion of enmity, 365. 

Spenser, poverty of, 134; story told of, 
166. 

Spinoza, declines a present, 142 ; perse- 
cuted by the Jews, 254. 

Spiritualism, very old, 182. 

Stanley, Dean, story of Rutherford and 
Usher, 357. 

Statue, doubtful sex of a, 187. 

St. Bartholomew, conduct of ladies at 
the massacre of, 35. 

Steele, one of his Tatlers referred to, 
169 ; Miss Prue, 246 ; castle-builders, 
330 ; on Christianity, 372 ; epitaph by, 

3 82 .- 

Sterling, criticises Rochefoucauld's Max- 
ims, 2 ; on seeking perfect virtue, 90 ; 
there will always be errors to mourn 
over, 91. 

Sterne, conscience not a law, 22; on the 
affectation of gravity, 70 ; an incessant 
corrector, 129; the sermon in Tristram 
Shandy, 192 ; the charge of plagiar- 
ism against, 259. 

Story of the lady and her three lovers, 

*73- 

St. Peter's, first view of, 196. 
St. Pierre, and Paul and Virginia, 148. 
Stewart, Dugald, remark of, on Bacon's 
Essays, 30. 



INDEX. 



401 



Suckling and Lovelace, 266. 

Sue, Eugene, a Jesuitess more to be 
dreaded than a Jesuit, 3. 

Suetonius, of Caligula's horse, 99 ; how 
he regarded Christians, 266. 

Sully, story told of, and the veiled lady, 
166. 

Surrey, Earl of, lines by, 326. 

Swift, on men's opinions, S ; story of 
and four clergymen in canonicals, 172; 
Bolingbroke to, 214 ; some thoughts of, 
214 ; anticipates his death, 214 ; to Bol- 
ingbroke, 246; irony and seriousness 
of, 312; never known to smile, 315; 
just religion enough to make us hate, 
364- 

Sydenham, poverty of, 135. 

Tacitus, his opinion of the Christian 
religion, 266. 

Taine, defines a character, 40 ; of Puri- 
tanism, 307. 

Talfourd, and Lamb's farce of Mr. H., 
273 ; anecdotes of Dyer, 285, 286. 

Talleyrand, his reply to Madame de 
Stael, 172 ; trembled when the word 
death was pronounced, 244 ; his reply 
to Rulhiere, 375. 

Tamerlane and the spider, 166. 

Tasso, an unwearied corrector, 126; pov- 
erty of, 134; a curious fact relating to, 
247 ; cause of his insanity, 247. 

Taylor, Demosthenes, Johnson's story 
of, 212. 

Taylor, Jeremy, arguments for humility, 
14 ; earthen vessels better than golden 
chalices, 347 ; our trouble from within, 
349; the religion of Christ, 371 ; those 
that need pity and those that refuse to 
pity, 376 ; of Abraham and the old 
man who worshiped the fire only, 3S7. 

Tell, William, relating to, 175. 

Temple, Sir William, of the old earl of 
Norwich, 297; compares life to wine, 
332. 

Tennyson, his care in composition, 127. 

Tertullian, his mode of dissuading Chris- 
tians from frequenting public specta- 
cles, 54 ; ideas of justice and mercy in 
his day, 55. 

Thackeray, the world can pry us out, 
but it don't care, 15 ; credulity of the 
sexes, 20 ; our paltry little rods to meas- 
ure heaven immeasurable, 53 ; a re- 
flection on marriage, 62 ; of the dying 
French duchess, 75 ; a reflection of, ap- 
plied to Madame de Pompadour, 336; 
toil, the condition of life, 337. 

Themistocles, Thucydides' remark on, 

379- ' . ... 

Theophrastus, a lament of, 30 ; timidity 
of, 262. 

Thompson, George, what he saw in Cal- 
cutta, 180. 

Thomson, a lady's opinion of, gathered 
from his writings, 18S ; luxurious indo- 
lence of, 247. 

26 



Thoreau, on doing good, 93; goodness 
tainted, 94 ; hacking at the branches of 
evil, 95 ; personal independence of, 
136. 

Threshing-machines, first effect of, 203. 

Thucydides, how he toiled on his his- 
tory, 125 ; ignorance bold and knowl- 
edge reserved, 240; a remark on The- 
mistocles, 379. 

Thurlow, and his daughter, 247. 

Tiberius, life of, with two title-pages, 2. 

Tillotson, two wonders in heaven, 382. 

Titian, how he painted, 130 ; colors of, 
compared with Reynolds', 179. 

Tomochichi, would be taught before he 
was baptized, 101 ; what he thought of 
the colonists, 101. 

Tonke, Home, how to be powerful, 67 ; 
Beckford's speech, 252 ; a remark on, 
by Coleridge, 378. 

Torquemada, and the Inquisition, 46. 

Townshend, Charles, and Fitzherbert, 

Trench, of the fraud played off on Vol- 
taire, 176. 

Truth, as humanity knows it, 4 ; the dif- 
ficulty of finding it, 360 ; it must be 
repeated over and over again, 361 ; the 
infinite number who persecute it, 362. 

Tyndall, of the formation of icicles, 209. 

Tyrian purple, 179. 

Tytler, a remark by, on Raleigh's His- 
'tory, 135. 

Value of an epithet, no. 

Vandyck, portrait of a celebrated widow 
by, 189. 

Vanity of human judgment, 24 ; of the 
world, 240. 

Vauvenargues, on curing the vices of 
nature, 91. 

Vere, Sir Horace, what caused his death, 
121. 

Vespasian, a story told of, 167. 

Vicar of Wakefield and the peasant, 312. 

Vinci, Leonardo da, his conscientiousness 
as a painter, 130; anecdote of, 377. 

Virgil, his care in composition, 125 ; what 
Pliny and Seneca thought of him, 144. 

Virtue, of the soul, 23 ; takes no pupils, 
95- 

Voltaire, the history of human opinions, 
7 ; upon what the fate of a nation has 
often depended, 8 ; anecdote of, 8 ; com- 
pares us to a river, n ; we on this 
globe like insects in a garden, 18; con- 
fesses his ignorance, 31 ; of the story 
of Newton and the apple, 176; the 
forged Veda, 176 ; invention of scissors, 
shirts, and socks, 203 ; Candide's sup- 
per at Venice with the six kings, 333. 

Vondel, poverty of, 134. 

Wallenstein, faculties of, improved by 
a fall, 226. 

Waller, a laborious writer, 126 ; his opin- 
ion of Paradise Lost, 147 ; lines by, 355. 



402 



INDEX. 



Walpole, Horace, compares man to a 
butterfly, 19 ; man a ridiculous animal, 
30; opinion of the Divina Commedia, 
145 ; contempt of Johnson and Gold- 
smith, 145 ; criticises Sterne, Sheridan, 
Spenser, Chaucer, Dante, Montaigne, 
Boswell, and Johnson, 146; and Straw- 
berry Hill, 154; opinion of Lord An- 
son, i8q; a curious fact of, 258. 

Walton, Izaak, quaint passages from, re- 
lating to Hooker, 225 ; reply to the 
discontented man, 344. 

Warren, Samuel, how the critics mis- 
judged his first work, 148. 

Washington, a story related by, 163 ; his 
remarkable gravity, 246. 

Webster, Daniel, wrote and re-wrote his 
fine passages, 132; the best talker he 
ever heard, 246. 

Weighing souls in a literal balance, 55. 

Wesley, Charles, his son a papist, 254. 

Wesley, John, on witchcraft, 59; and 
Tomochichi, 101 ; his belief in ghosts, 
243 ; his quiescent turbulence, 261 , 
his story of a parishioner who lived 
on boiled parsnips, 382. 

White, Gilbert, effect of certain food on 
a bullfinch, 10; differences in flocks 
of sheep, n ; a strange propensity of 
cats, 210; peculiarity of the tortoise, 
211. 

Whitefield, always improving his dis- 
courses, 132 ; an exclamation of, 376. 

Whipple, on an affectation of dignity, 
67 ; of the mother of Thomas a Becket, 
212. 

Wilberforce, and Owen's scheme of re- 
form, 92 ; and Wendell Phillips, 237. 

Wilkinson, Richard, martyrdom of, 51. 

Wilson, Prof., to the Ettrick Shepherd, 
10 ; thought to be a madman in Glas- 
gow, 145; the idea of the Noctes not 
his, 255 ; tete-a-tete with the poet 
Campbell, 267 ; contest for the profes- 
sorship, 287 ; first lecture in the univer- 
sity, 288; achievements in running, 
leaping, etc., 289 ; encounter with a 
pugilist, 2S9 ; pedestrian feats, 290 ? 
scene in an Edinburgh street, 291; in- 



terferes at a prize-fight, 292 ; describes 
a fairy's funeral, 293 ; his relations with 
Dr. Blair, 310. 

Witchcraft, Sir Matthew Hale's belief 
in, 57 ; Sir Thomas Browne's opinion 
of, 57, terrible punishment of, 57 ; John 
Wesley's belief in, 59 ; Richard Bax- 
ter a believer in, 59 ; a passage from 
Lowell on, 61. 

Wither, George, wrote his Shepherd's 
Hunting in prison, 136. 

Wolsey, credulity of, 224. 

Woman, characterized by Burns, 3 ; re- 
ply of a good, 377. 

Woodworth and his famous song, 248. 

Woolman, John, eulogium upon, and 
passage from, 370. 

Wordsworth, his care in composition, 
128 ; his reply to Rogers, 137 ; Tobin's 
advice to, 148 ; origin of the Ancient 
Mariner, 149 ; thought to be a fool by 
some of his neighbors, 155 ; his de- 
fense of the church, and his opinion 
of the clergy, 257 ; his man-servant 
James, 351; lines by, 352; what he 
said of Mrs. Barbauld's stanza on Life, 

356. « . . 

World, the, 19 ; on reforming it, 90 ; it 

cannot keep quiet, 109. 
Wotton, Sir Henry, his reply to a bigot, 

37 2 - 
Wycherley, on reproving faults, 364. 

Ximenes, Cardinal, a story told of, 167. 

York minster, not appreciated by Cole- 
ridge, 196. 

Youatt, differences in flocks of sheep, 11. 

Young, Mr., the prototype of Parson 
Adams, 285. 

Young, an incident of Swift, related by, 
214; gayety of, 245. 

Young, Dean, passages from his sermons, 
366, 372. 

Zeal, a violent, that we must correct, 

363. 
Zenobia, temple of, idealized by La 

Bruyere, 219. 



, 6** 



A 















<* 



















^ 









^ CL 


















s +. 















fi°< 



^ * . 












OH 

- 








A 




































B 









^ 

V 















^ 



v x 



< 









/, > 


















' 






,V N 



■s- 





















